Hundreds of thousands of passengers face flight cancelations as Heathrow closes
LONDON—Hundreds of thousands of passengers faced flight cancellations at Europe’s busiest travel hub after a fire knocked out power to London’s Heathrow Airport and forced it to be closed for the day.
At least 1,350 flights to and from Heathrow were affected already, including several from US cities that were canceled, flight tracking service FlightRadar24 said.
At least 120 inbound flights were diverted to other airports.
Industry experts said tourism, travel and trade would be further disrupted around the world, as flights will be canceled or delayed due to aircraft being out of position.
British Airways itself had 341 flights scheduled to land at Heathrow on Friday.
‘Significant impact’
“This will clearly have a significant impact on our operation and our customers, and we are working as quickly as possible to update them on their travel options for the next 24 hours and beyond,” it said.
The London Fire Brigade said on Friday afternoon that it had brought under control the blaze that closed the airport.
Heathrow is one of the world’s busiest airports for international travel. It had its busiest January on record earlier this year, with more than 6.3 million passengers, up more than 5 percent for the same period last year.
January also was the 11th month in a row it averaged over 200,000 passengers a day, with the airport citing transatlantic travel as a key contributor.
Heathrow normally opens for flights at 6 a.m. due to nighttime flying restrictions. It said the closure would last until 11:59 p.m. Friday.
Flames soared into the sky on Thursday night when a transformer at an electrical substation caught fire in west London.
The outage affected more than 16,300 homes.
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