Air passengers face the breakthrough days as Heathrow struggles to recover from a fire that closed Europe’s busiest airport, leading to 1,300 flight cancellations and raising questions about the resistance of the United Kingdom.
The airport was fully reopening for flights on Saturday morning and the first planes were erected shortly after 6am.
But the rift is still expected after carriers began the logistical challenge to resume their operations with planes, crews and passengers abroad and scattered around the world.
British Airways, Heathrow’s largest airline, said she was expecting to cancel about 15 percent of its flights to the airport on Saturday.
The fire in a local electricity substation caused a power outage that closed the airport in the early hours of Friday morning and forced entrance flights to divert to other centers, such as Paris and Amsterdam, or return to their original airports.
Some transatlantic flights ended wherever spaces were available, including an Air Canada flight from Toronto deviated in Goose Bay, Newfoundland.
At its height, 70 firefighters were receiving with Inferno that began shortly before Thursday midnight and lit 25,000 liters of cooling oil.
“This is an unprecedented situation and we have not seen the heathrow closure of this scale for many years,” said Sean Doyle, BA chief executive.
London’s metropolitan police said its anti -terrorism command was to lead the questions, given the “location of the substation and the impact that this incident has had on critical national infrastructure”.
On Friday the evening Met added that while the responsibility remained in the hands of the police against terrorism, they were not at the moment they treated the incident as suspicious.
“Investigation of fire remains in its early stages,” Force said. “After the initial evaluation, we are not treating this incident as suspicious, though the questions remain in the following.”
The closure after the failure of a local substation also raised questions about Heathrow Resistance, and if other parts of the UK’s national infrastructure were similarly.
Willie Walsh, a former BA chief and current head of the International Air Transport Association, criticized what he said was a “clear planning failure” that had left critical infrastructure depending on a single source of energy.
MP Ruth Cadbury, chairman of the Transport Selection Committee, told the BBC incident “A asked questions about the resistance of the infrastructure”.
Heathrow leaders rejected these claims. They said the airport withdrew energy from three substations, as well as spare generators, which provide sufficient urgent power to keep track open although not enough to direct the full airport operations for an extended period.
Thomas Woldbye, the general director of Heathrow, said the airport had suffered “an incident of great severity”. He added: “This is unprecedented. It has never happened before … We do not close the airport unless we have serious security concerns.”
While only one of the three substations that supply power failed, Heathrow was forced to close thousands of electrical systems. “Restarting all these systems in a safe way … It takes a lot of time,” Woldbye said. “We can’t save ourselves 100 percent (against any contingency),” he said.
BA, which operates more than half of the flights from Heathrow, was from the most affected airline and told the passengers to prepare for long breaks.
“This incident will have a significant impact on the airline and our customers for many days onwards, with disruption to the expected trips over the coming days,” Doyle said.
The airline had planned to operate more than 670 flights carrying about 107,000 customers on Friday, with similar numbers planned over the weekend. More than 200,000 passengers use heathrow every day.
The full closure sent passengers who rushed to find other ways to travel. Some airlines, including Ryanair and EasyJet, as well as the International Service of Eurostar Trains, put in additional places for their services, while UK rail operators reported spikes in train bookings.
Some turned to private aircraft. Toby Edwards, co-co-chief of the private company Jet Charter Victor, said the demand for flights was “grown”, including a passenger who paid $ 75,000 to fly across the Atlantic.
As the demand increased for room hotels near Heathrow were accused of rising prices more than four times to £ 700 per night.
Shares on European airlines were closed on Friday after the closure of Heathrow, including the International Airlines group, the parent of British Airways, which fell nearly 3 percent.
Additional reporting by Lucy Fisher, Kieran Smith, Akila Quinio and Jamie John
