Heathrow updates: BA warns of MORE chaos as ‘all customers delayed’ after ‘colossal failure’ at Europe’s busiest airport
BRITISH Airways has warned all customers will be delayed today as Heathrow Airport was blasted over the “colossal failure”.
Flights resumed at the west London airport on Friday evening following hours of closure after a blaze knocked out an electricity substation in Hayes late on Thursday evening.
BA, which has a major presence at Heathrow, was the worst affected by yesterday’s shutdown.
The airline said it expects to operate around 85 per cent of its scheduled flights at the airport on Saturday.
It 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.
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.”
Meanwhile airline chiefs accused Europe‘s busiest airport of “clear failure” over the fire shutdown.
And Sir Gavin Williamson, the Tory former defence secretary, said: “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.”
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 Airport’s chief executive Thomas Woldbye told reporters on Friday afternoon: “We expect to be back in full operation (tomorrow), so 100 per cent operation as a normal day.
“(Passengers) should come to the airport as they normally would. There’s no reason to come earlier.”
According to flight tracking website FlightRadar24, flight BA56 from Johannesburg, South Africa, was the first regular passenger flight to land at Heathrow since Thursday evening touching down at 4.37am.
Restrictions on overnight flights were temporarily lifted to help ease congestion, the Department of Transport 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, Mr Woldbye said a back-up transformer failed meaning systems had to be closed down in accordance with safety procedures.
This was 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 that 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 BA, Air Canada and United Airlines.
A BA flight to Riyadh, in Saudi Arabia, took off just before 9pm after a slight delay to its expected departure time.
Around 200,000 passengers have been affected by the closure of what is Europe’s busiest airport.
A spokesperson for Heathrow said early on Saturday the airport was “open and fully operational”.
Crisis mode
By Lisa Minot, Head of Travel
HEATHROW’S closure is likely to cause massive disruption in the coming days as more than 200,000 impacted passengers struggle to get to their destination.
The largest previous impact on Heathrow – and airports across Europe – was the closure of airspace following the volcanic ash cloud from the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland in April 2010 which saw disruption over five days.
Yesterday alone, 1,351 flights were due to take off and land at the UK’s largest airport.
More than 120 flights were already in the air and on their way to Heathrow when the fire broke out.
Planes have been diverted to airports across the UK and Europe.
Those who managed to land at a UK airport should count themselves lucky as they can at least continue their journey back to Heathrow via road or rail.
But it is going to cause significant disruption for hundreds of thousands of travellers today and in the coming days.
Right now, the airport and airlines are in crisis mode but in the coming weeks, no doubt questions will be asked as to how we can protect critical infrastructure and prevent this happening again.
They added: “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.”
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”.
LFB received the first reports of the fire at 11.23pm on Thursday forcing the closure of the airport.
Some 120 aircraft heading to the airport at that time were forced to either divert or return to their point of origin.
The measures saw passengers on board Qantas flights to Heathrow from Singapore and Perth diverted to Paris before taking buses to London.
Counter-terrorism officers from the Met 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 83.9 million passengers travelling through its terminals in 2024.
This is believed to be the worst disruption at Heathrow since December 2010.
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.
On Friday, other airports accepted diverted flights originally destined for Heathrow including London’s Gatwick Airport and Shannon Airport in Co Clare.