By Rob Harris
London: Heathrow Airport has resumed full operations after a power outage that upended journeys for 200,000 passengers on Friday, but the British government has said there were “questions to answer” about how a single fire could shut down Europe’s busiest airport.
A spokesperson for Prime Minister Keir Starmer said there must be a rigorous investigation into the incident to ensure “this scale of disruption does not happen again”.
Passenger aircraft on the tarmac at London Heathrow Airport.Credit: Getty Images
The 18-hour outage was caused by a fire at an electrical substation supplying the airport, one of the busiest in the world for international traffic. While there was no evidence at this stage of foul play, said police, counter-terrorism officers would lead a probe because of the incident’s impact on critical infrastructure.
London’s Metropolitan Police said all possible lines of inquiry were being pursued, while the London Fire Brigade said the blaze at North Hyde substation was “believed to be non-suspicious”.
The airport said full operations had resumed by Saturday evening (AEDT) after British Airways and Virgin Atlantic began flying empty planes into the airport to ease a backlog of flights on Friday afternoon.
A fire is seen at the North Hyde electrical substation near Heathrow Airport in London early on Friday.Credit: Matthew Muirhead via AP
About 120 aircraft were flying to Heathrow when the fire broke out, according to aircraft tracking specialist Flightradar24. Those flights were diverted. At least 1350 flights to and from the airport were affected.
More than 400 passengers on board Qantas flights from Singapore and Perth were diverted to Paris before taking buses to London in a 32-hour haul, the airline said.
Mag Leahy told the London Telegraph that she and other passengers had to take a coach through the Channel Tunnel and finally arrived at Heathrow on Friday evening.
“Qantas staff at [Heathrow] Terminal 5 were lovely, handing out water and food,” she told the newspaper. “A bit late in the day for it, really, considering we landed in Paris at 5am.”
Joshua Richardson, who was on the flight from Perth, told The Times that he arrived at Heathrow after travelling more than 32 hours and still needed to get to Oxford.
“We first found out because the in-flight entertainment changed from Heathrow to Paris, and people were like, ‘What’s going on?’” he said.
“The pilot said Heathrow had lost power – the only place we could divert was Paris. We had to circle Paris for a bit, and you could see other planes circling too. There’s going to be some stories of people being messed up by this, so I won’t complain. All I am is tired and cranky.”
Flights at Heathrow Airport are resuming sooner than expected after a fire at an electricity substation.Credit: Getty Images
Heathrow Airport chief executive Thomas Woldbye apologised for the disruption but defended its response to the incident, saying: “This is as big as it gets for our airport”. He admitted to reporters outside the airport that Heathrow’s power was “a bit of a weak point”.
British media reported airline chiefs had accused the airport of “clear failure”. The Telegraph quoted former defence secretary Gavin Williamson, a Conservative, as saying: “This is a colossal failure of Heathrow Airport. They have failed to build in the resilience that is required to ensure this level of disruption does not happen.”
Workers are seen as smoke rises from the North Hyde electrical substation, which caught fire.Credit: AP
The publication said expansion plans by the consortium that owns the facility, including for a dedicated power station, have been delayed for a decade.
The disruption fell short of that caused by the 2010 eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano, which spewed clouds of ash into the atmosphere and created transatlantic air travel chaos for months.
“I’d like to stress that this has been an incident of major severity. It’s not a small fire,” Woldbye said.
Heathrow had its busiest January on record this year, with more than 6.3 million passengers, up more than 5 per cent from the same period last year.
It is usually closed to all flights except for emergency diversions between 10.55pm and 6am, with a strictly limited number of arrivals scheduled from 4.45am onwards.
The British government temporarily lifted restrictions on overnight flights to help clear the backlog.
with AP
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