London Heathrow To Re-Open Sooner Than Expected After Nearby Fire

London Heathrow hopes to run a full service of flights on Saturday, March 22 after an off-site fire knocked out the UK’s main hub airport for much of March 21.

Hundreds of thousands of passengers had their travel plans scrapped after the overnight fire damaged a nearby electricity sub-station supplying power to the airport.

Airlines are scrambling to re-jig schedules following the blaze, which halted all flights for much of the day. Europe’s busiest airport typically handles around 1,350 arrivals and departures, and almost 300,000 passengers daily. The biggest operator at Heathrow, British Airways, operates around half of those services.

Heathrow officials initially said that it would be out of action until at least 11:59 p.m. local time on March 21. Shortly after 4:00 p.m. local time, however, the airport said flights would restart imminently.

“Our teams have worked tirelessly since the incident to ensure a speedy recovery,” detailed Heathrow in its update. “We’re now safely able to restart flights, prioritizing repatriation and relocation of aircraft. Please do not travel to the airport unless your airline has advised you to do so.

“We hope to run a full operation tomorrow and will provide further information shortly. Our priority remains the safety of our passengers and those working at the airport. We apologize for the inconvenience caused by this incident.”

Although priority is being given to getting passengers who were diverted to other UK or European airports back to Heathrow, the effects of aircraft being out of position around the globe are likely to linger for several days.

UK counter-terrorism police are heading the investigation into the blaze, although there is no specific evidence as yet to suggest it was deliberate.

Some flights heading for Heathrow overnight on Thursday and scheduled to land from 4:30 a.m. local time were diverted to airports as far away as Madrid, while others returned to their departure airports.

Inbound BA flights were diverted to London Gatwick, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, Amsterdam Schiphol, Shannon in Ireland and Madrid—the last because “it’s a massive airport, so they have capacity,” a BA spokesman said.

Heathrow’s second-largest operator, Virgin Atlantic, said that the power cut had “a significant impact on our flying program both into and out of Heathrow and all Virgin Atlantic arriving and departing flights are canceled until on 21 March, with the rest of today’s schedule currently under review.”

London Gatwick said on Friday morning that it had accepted seven inbound diversions. A spokesman said that accepting more would depend on the number of available stands and their capacity to accept various aircraft types.

“We have capacity for a small number of diverts but as yet we haven’t received any requests,” a spokesman for London Stansted said early Friday.

He added that LCC Ryanair had added some additional flights to its Stansted-Dublin schedules March 21; the London-Dublin route, taking in all the London area’s airports, is the second-busiest in Europe, with some 2.35 million annual seats, according to aviation data consultancy OAG.

IATA Director General Willie Walsh said that the closing of Heathrow would inconvenience a huge number of travelers and was yet another case of the airport letting down both travelers and airlines.

As a former CEO of British Airways, Walsh has frequently been critical of Heathrow and its high costs.

Following the fire, he said the airport’s closure raised serious questions.

“Firstly, how is it that critical infrastructure—of national and global importance—is totally dependent on a single power source without an alternative,” adding that, if it was, it was a clear failure of planning by the airport.

He added that the question also arose as to who would pick up the costs of hundreds of thousands of delayed passengers.

“We must find a fairer allocation of passenger care costs than airlines alone picking up the tab when infrastructure fails. Until that happens, Heathrow has very little incentive to improve.”

The fire at the center of the disruption, at the North Hyde electricity substation just to the north of Heathrow, broke out around 11:00 p.m. local time on March 20. According to London Fire Brigade, the seat of the fire was a transformer containing 25,000 liters of cooling oil.

The major blaze was declared under control by around 6:30 a.m. on March 21, but images from the scene showed extensive damage to the site, making it unclear when it would be operational again.

The investigation into the fire is being headed by counter-terrorism police because of “the location of the substation and the impact this incident has had on critical national infrastructure,” a London police spokesman told the BBC. However, officers had no specific evidence that the blaze was deliberate and were keeping an open mind as to the cause.

The Counter-Terrorism Command has the “specialist resources and capabilities” to progress the investigation “at pace to minimize disruption and identify the cause.”

UK energy minister Ed Miliband said that the fire at the North Hyde substation appeared also to have knocked out a back-up generator.

The UK’s National Grid electricity distributor said that it was working to re-route power supplies to the airport from other sources.

--

Editor's note: This is a breaking news story and has been updated.