London Heathrow Airport resumed complete operations on Saturday, one day after a fire knocked out its energy supply and closed the busiest airport in Europe, causing global travel chaos.
The travel industry was struggling to redirect passengers and fix the schedules of the abused airlines after the great fire in an electrical substation that serves to the airport.
Some flights had resumed on Friday night, but the closure of the fifth most American airport in the world during most of the day left tens of thousands of thousands of scarce hotel rooms and replacement seats while the airlines tried to return the jets and the crew to the bases.
The teams worked throughout the airport to support passengers affected by the interruption, said a Heathrow spokesman in a statement sent by email.
“We have hundreds of additional colleagues available in our terminals and we have added flights to today to facilitate the 10,000 additional passengers traveling through the airport,” said the spokesman.
The travel industry, which faces the perspective of a financial blow that costs dozens of millions of pounds and a probable struggle about who should pay, questioned how such crucial infrastructure could fail without support.
“It is a clear planning failure by the airport,” said Willie Walsh, head of the Global Airlines Iata body, who, as a former British Airway chief, has been a fierce critic of the busy center for years.
The airport had to drive 1,351 flights on Friday, flying up to 291,000 passengers, but the planes deviated to other airports in Great Britain and throughout Europe, while many long -distance flights returned to their starting point.
Heathrow’s executive president Thomas Woldbye said he expected the airport to return “in full operation” on Saturday.
When asked who would pay for the interruption, he said that there were “current procedures”, and added that “we have no liabilities in force for incidents like this.”
The Great Britain Department of Britain, the president of British Airways, Levan Doyle, temporarily raised to restrictions on restrictions to facilitate congestion, but the executive president of British Airways, Sean Doyle, said the closing had a “great impact on all our clients flying with us in the coming days.”
Virgin Atlantic said he expected to operate “an almost complete schedule” with limited cancellations on Saturday, but that the situation remained dynamic and that all flights would remain under a continuous review.
Airlines such as Jetblue, American Airlines, Air Canada, Air India, Delta Air Lines, Qantas, United Airlines, British Airways and Virgin were diverted or returned to their origin airports due to the closure, according to data from the Cirium flight analysis firm.
Aviation experts said that the last time the European airports experienced an interruption at such a large scale was the cloud of 2010 islandic ashes that based about 100,000 flights.
They warned that some passengers forced to land in Europe may have to remain in transit rooms if they lack the paperwork to leave the airport.
Hotels prices around Heathrow jumped, with reserve sites that offered rooms for 500 pounds ($ 1,028), approximately five times normal prices levels.
Police said after an initial evaluation, they were not trying the incident in the substation of power as suspicion, although the consultations remained in progress. The London Fire Brigade said their research would focus on the electric distribution equipment.
Heathrow and the other important airports in London have been beaten by other interruptions in recent years, more recently by an automated door failure and a collapse of the air traffic system, both in 2023.
Philip Ingram, a former British army intelligence officer, said Heathrow’s inability to continue operating vulnerability exposed in the critical national infrastructure of Great Britain.
“It’s a attention call,” he told Reuters. “There is no way that Heathrow is completely eliminated due to a failure in a substation of power.”
Heathrow said he had diesel generators and uninterrupted food sources to get airplanes and evacuate passengers safely. All these systems operated as expected. But with the airport consuming as much energy as a small city, he said that he could not execute all his operations safely in the backup systems.
British Prime Minister’s spokesman Keir Starmer said there were questions to answer how the incident occurred and that there would be an exhaustive investigation.
