The British Airport from Heathrow said that it would be closed all Friday after a big fire in a nearby electric substation had extinguished electricity and the flight plans all over the world disturbed.
The London Feuerbrigade said that around 70 firefighters in the west of London had proported to the fire in the west of the fire, which caused a mass current failure in Heathrow, the most busy and fifth strongest airport in the world.
The fire, which was reported on Thursday shortly after the local time from 11 p.m., forced aircraft, at airports across Great Britain and Europe, while many long -haul flights simply returned to their starting point.
Huge orange flames and black clouds of smoke could be shot from the airport from a power plant of about three kilometers to the sky. It took about seven hours to control the firefighters, said the London fire brigade. In the early morning, the streets around the largest Airport in Great Britain were largely left.
“I know that the situation in Heathrow causes distress and disorder, especially for travel or without power in their houses,” said British Prime Minister Keir Starrer in a statement. “I get regular updates and am in close contact with local partners. Thanks to our rescue workers for the safety of people.”
Fire cause unclear
The Minister of Energy Ed Miliband said that the “catastrophic” fire prevented the power supply system from doing so, and the engineers were working on using a third backup mechanism.
“With such an incident, we want to understand why it happened and what if any lessons are suitable for our infrastructure,” he told Sky News.
London firefighters worked with the police to examine the matter.
The London fire brigade sent 10 engines and around 70 firefighters to control the fire, and around 150 people were evacuated from their houses near the power plant.
“This was a very visible and important incident, and our firefighters worked tirelessly under difficult conditions to control the fire as soon as possible,” said the deputy commissioner Pat Goulbourne.
The cost of the effects could be around £ 20 million ($ 37 million) per day, said Paul Charles, a travel consultant.
“A backup should be failed if the core system is affected. Heathrow is such an important piece of British infrastructure that it should have failed systems,” Charles told Reuters.
Heathrow said that the airport, which was through 1,351 flights during the day and up to 291,000 passengers, would remain closed until midnight because it had a significant power failure.
Heathrow usually opens every day at 6 a.m. for flights due to night fly restrictions.
Heathrow order canceled in Torontos Pearson
It was not immediately clear how many Canadian deviations and arrivals would be affected.
“All incoming flights are currently canceled,” the Airports Authority Greater Toronto told Pearson Airport to CBC News. GTAA said that passengers are recommended to check the status of your flight with your airline and that Pearson’s social media accounts would be updated regularly.
When the closure was announced, around 120 flights were in the air, others turned over and others to Gatwick Airport outside of London, Charles de Gaulle Airport at Paris Airport and Ireland’s Shannon Airport, showed the tracking services.
The French airline Air France canceled eight flights from and from Heathrow, while the Dutch airline KLM said that it canceled three return flights.
British Airways himself planned 341 flights to land in Heathrow on Friday.
Heavy residues are expected
Industry experts said that tourism, travel and trade would continue to be interrupted worldwide because the flights are no longer able due to aircraft.
“Heathrow is one of the most important hubs in the world,” said Ian Petchenik, spokesman for the flight tracking website FLIGHRADAR24. “This will disturb the operations of the airlines all over the world.”
The carefully choreographed networks of airlines depend on aircraft and crews at certain areas at certain times. Dozens of aviation companies have to quickly configure their networks to move aircraft and crews.
“The other question is: ‘What will airlines do to deal with the deficit of the passengers?” It will be a few chaotic days. “
Some passengers turned to social media. Adrian Spender, who works at a British retailer Tesco, said in a post on X that he was in an Airbus A380 that had driven to Heathrow.
“#Heathrow no idea where we are going. Currently about Austria.”
Heathrow and the other major airports of London have been affected by failures in recent years, most recently by an automated gate error and a collapse of the air traffic system, both in 2023.
At the beginning of this year, Heathrow had his busiest January with more than 6.3 million passengers to increase more than five percent compared to the same period of the previous year. Also January was the 11th month in a row, in which it was an average of over 200,000 passengers per day, with the airport quoting transatlantic trips as important participants.
