Heathrow Airport, one of Europe’s busiest, has returned to ‘full operation’, the airport authority has said. Heathrow Airport was “fully operational” on Saturday, a day after the airport’s services were suspended and travel was disrupted, an airport spokesman said.
London Airport was closed for most of Friday after a fire broke out at the airport’s electrical substation, but flight services partially resumed later in the evening. “Heathrow Airport has fully reopened and is back in operation today,” he said. “Teams across the airport are continuing to do their utmost to assist passengers affected by yesterday’s fire and power outage at the off-airport power substation,” he said.
According to the FlightRadar24 tracking website, about 1,350 flights were affected by Friday’s closure. Even after service resumes on Saturday, some flight departure and landing schedules are expected to be affected. “We have hundreds of additional colleagues in our terminals and we have added flights to today’s schedule to accommodate the additional 10,000 passengers traveling through the airport,” he said.
The airport administration issued a statement saying, “Passengers traveling today are requested to remain in constant contact with their airline for the latest information regarding their flights.” British Airways said it expects to operate around 85 percent of scheduled flights at the airport throughout the day.
The UK Department for Transport has also temporarily lifted a ban on night flights to reduce congestion. Around 230,000 passengers use Heathrow Airport every day. The airport serves 83 million passengers annually. Heathrow Airport has flights to around 80 countries. The scale of the disruption has raised questions about the vulnerability of one of the UK’s vital pieces of travel infrastructure.
Authorities said the fire that broke out on Thursday night was ‘not suspicious’ and the investigation would ‘focus on electrical distribution equipment’. Earlier, London’s Metropolitan Police Force’s Counter-Terrorism Command said it was leading the investigation into the impact of the fire.
