Heathrow ‘open and fully operational’ after disruption caused by power outage
Heathrow Airport said it is “open and fully operational” on Saturday after the airport was shut over a loss of power caused by a substation fire.
Flights resumed at the west London airport on Friday evening and restrictions on overnight flights were temporarily lifted following hours of closure, after a blaze knocked out an electricity substation in Hayes late on Thursday evening.
The Metropolitan Police are not treating the incident as suspicious and the London Fire Brigade’s investigation is focusing on the electrical distribution equipment.
Heathrow also said it has added 50 slots to Saturday’s schedule to facilitate an extra 10,000 passengers travelling through the airport.
A statement from Heathrow says flights have officially resumed and advised passengers to contact their airlines if they are due to fly on Saturday.
The statement, posted to X, says: “Flights have resumed at Heathrow following yesterday’s power outage.
“If you’re due to travel today, we advise you to still contact your airline for your latest flight information before heading to the airport.
“We apologise for the disruption and appreciate your patience whilst operations return to normal.”
Heathrow reopened
A further statement from Heathrow said the airport was “open and fully operational”. A spokesperson said: “We can confirm that Heathrow is open and fully operational today.
“Teams across the airport continue to do everything they can to support passengers impacted by yesterday’s outage at an off-airport power substation.
“We have hundreds of additional colleagues on hand in our terminals and we have added flights to today’s schedule to facilitate an extra 10,000 passengers travelling through the airport.
“Passengers travelling today should check with their airline for the latest information regarding their flight.”
The airport later added that all terminals and all car parks are open. Firefighters and workers were still at the electricity substation on Saturday morning.
Transport secretary Heidi Alexander posted on X: “Good to see Heathrow Airport return to full operations this morning. Passengers should continue to check with their airline before travelling.”
‘Fantastic’ response
An American tourist has praised his airline’s and Heathrow’s “fantastic” response to a fire that closed the transport hub on Friday.
Speaking at Heathrow, Tim Kolb, who travelled to the UK on holiday from Dallas, Texas, told the PA news agency: “I was just getting ready to board the plane on Thursday night, and the news actually started coming across on our phones quicker than on the (airport) desk.
“But American Airlines did a fabulous job – we didn’t have to wait in the line or anything. They got us our accommodation reservation.”
Kolb, 55, added: “I thought I was going to be there (Dallas) delayed two days, but I went over yesterday. It was organised well.
“In fact, they had several planes leaving within an hour of each other to Heathrow. The way everybody responded and fell into action, it was fantastic.”
According to flight tracking website FlightRadar24, British Airways (BA) flight BA56 from Johannesburg, South Africa was the first regular passenger flight to land at Heathrow since Thursday evening, touching down at 4.37am.
BA, which has a major presence at Heathrow, said it expects to operate around 85% of its scheduled flights at the airport on Saturday.
The airline would usually expect to run nearly 600 departures and arrivals on Saturday but it is understood cancellations will be made, where possible, to high-frequency routes.
Continued delays
A spokesman said: “We are planning to operate as many flights as possible to and from Heathrow on Saturday, but to recover an operation of our size after such a significant incident is extremely complex.
“We expect around 85 per cent of our Saturday Heathrow schedule to run, but it is likely that all travelling customers will experience delays as we continue to navigate the challenges posed by Friday’s power outage at the airport.”
Restrictions on overnight flights were temporarily lifted to help ease congestion, the Department of Transport (DfT) said.
According to Heathrow’s website, there is no formal ban on night flights but, since the 1960s, the government has placed restrictions on them.
There is an annual limit of 5,800 night-time take-offs and landings between the hours of 11.30pm and 6am as well as a nightly limit, which caps the amount of noise the airport can make at night.
Of the power outage, Heathrow Airport’s chief executive Thomas Woldbye said a back-up transformer failed, meaning systems had to be closed down in accordance with safety procedures so that power supplies could be restructured from two remaining substations to restore enough electricity to power what is described as a “mid-sized city”.
He apologised to stranded passengers and defended the airport’s response to the situation, saying the incident is as “as big as it gets for our airport” and that “we cannot guard ourselves 100 per cent”.
After announcing early on Friday it would be closed until 11.59pm, Heathrow later reopened with a focus on repatriation flights for passengers diverted to other airports in Europe.
Following that announcement, several airlines said they would restart scheduled flights both to and from Heathrow, including British Airways, Air Canada and United Airlines.
Busiest airport
Around 200,000 passengers have been affected by the closure of what is Europe’s busiest airport.
Transport secretary Heidi Alexander said she was in close contact with the Energy Secretary, the Home Secretary and with Heathrow to “make sure that any lessons we need to learn from the systems that the airport has in place are learned”.
Some 120 aircraft heading to the airport on Thursday evening at the time of the incident were forced to either divert or return to their point of origin, which saw passengers on Qantas flights to Heathrow from Singapore and Perth divert to Paris before taking buses to London.
Counter-terrorism officers from the Metropolitan Police have been leading the investigation into the cause of the fire, which did not result in any casualties at the scene.
“After initial assessment, we are not treating this incident as suspicious, although inquiries do remain ongoing,” Commander Simon Messinger said.
Thousands of homes were left without power and more than 100 people were evacuated after a transformer within the substation caught fire.
Heathrow is Europe’s largest airport, with more than 83.9m passengers travelling through its terminals in 2024.
This is believed to be the worst disruption at Heathrow since December 2010, when thousands of Christmas getaway passengers camped in the terminals because of widespread cancellations caused by snow.
In April of that year, air travel was grounded across Europe because of an ash cloud caused by an Icelandic volcanic eruption.
Press Association reporters