Heathrow airport reopens but ‘huge impact’ on travel expected for days – live updates
Heathrow ‘open and fully operational’
Heathrow airport says “flights have resumed at Heathrow following yesterday’s power outage” and the airport is now “fully operational”.
It added that and that hundreds of additional staff have been drafted in to help clear the backlog of flights.
A statement read:
We can confirm that Heathrow is open and fully operational today. 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.
Key events
Heathrow airport has confirmed that it had added 50 slots to Saturday’s schedule to facilitate an extra 10,000 passengers travelling through the airport.
A statement from Heathrow says flights have officially resumed and advised passengers to contact their airlines if they are due to fly on Saturday.
To provide some context, Heathrow is Europe’s largest airport, with more than 83.9 million passengers travelling through its terminals in 2024.
Friday’s closure is believed to be the worst disruption at Heathrow since December 2010, when thousands of Christmas getaway passengers camped in the terminals because of widespread cancellations caused by snow, reports the PA news agency.
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 County Clare.
All terminals and car parks at Heathrow are open, the airport has confirmed.
In a post on X, Heathrow airport said:
Flights have resumed at Heathrow, and we are open and fully operational. All terminals and all car parks are open across Heathrow.”
Counter-terrorism officers from the Metropolitan police have been leading the investigation into the cause of the Hayes 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,” Cmdr Simon Messinger said, according to the PA news agency.
Sammy Gecsoyler
Chirping birds and unbroken skies come as standard in many English villages, though not in Harmondsworth – which lies under Heathrow’s flight path. But Friday was different.
“It’s been peace and tranquillity,” said 72-year-old Andrew Melville, who has lived in the village, which straddles the border of London and Berkshire, for 49 years. “Especially not being woken up by transatlantic flights in the early morning.”
The travel hub, which is one of the busiest in the world, came to a standstill on Friday morning after a fire at an electrical substation in Hayes, west London. More than 1,300 flights have been grounded and counter-terrorism police have launched an investigation into the cause of the blaze.
The airport’s closure has caused travel misery for many but those living nearby have been given rare respite from the roaring planes that shatter the illusion of village life.
“Usually we get an early morning call and a late-night goodnight,” said Melville, describing the unsociable times that massive, long-haul jets land and take off. “Days like today are blissful because we can go about our normal lives.”
The last time people in the village saw the skies this clear was during the Covid lockdowns. “They were awful but this village was great back then. People running around, cycling on bikes and listening to the birds. You could even hear yourself think,” said Melville.
David Page, 71, who lives in the nearby village of Longford, has also noticed a change. “It has gotten rid of all the hire cars that park at the top of the village,” he said. While he is enjoying the peace and quiet, Page said people who choose to live in the village should expect some noise. “You don’t move to Longford for peace. You move here because you’re working just over there,” he said, pointing towards the airport.
Mark Gerts
The closure of Heathrow, Europe’s busiest airport, due to a fire at a nearby electrical substation dominates the front pages of British newspapers on Saturday, with more than 1,350 flights cancelled and journeys disrupted for hundreds of thousands of passengers.
The Guardian splashes with “Chaos and anger as fire shuts Heathrow airport”, above a picture of anxious travellers, and an article that focuses on Downing Street’s reaction: that there are “questions to answer” as to how a power failure could cause such disruption.
The Times leans into the blame narrative with “Heathrow chaos puts bosses in firing line”, elaborating in its subheading with “Holidays ruined” and “Travellers stranded abroad”.
The Daily Telegraph calls it the “Colossal failure of Heathrow blackout” next to a photo of the secretary of state for energy, Ed Miliband, who, as the subheading explains, “admits site looks ‘vulnerable’”.
You can find all the front pages and analysis here:
Several airlines announced they would restart scheduled flights both to and from Heathrow airport, including British Airways (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, according to the PA news agency.
Restrictions on overnight flights have also been temporarily lifted to help ease congestion, the Department for Transport said.
Willie Walsh, the International Air Transport Association’s director general, criticised Heathrow airport in as a result of the disruption, reports the PA news agency.
“This is yet another case of Heathrow letting down both travellers and airlines,” he said. Walsh added:
From that arises the question of who bears the costs of taking care of disrupted travellers.
We must find a fairer allocation of passenger care costs than airlines alone picking up the tab when infrastructure fails. Until that happens, Heathrow has very little incentive to improve.”
Heathrow chief executive defends response as he apologises to stranded passengers
Flights have resumed at Heathrow airport as its chief executive apologised to stranded passengers and defended the response to an “unprecedented” loss of power caused by a substation fire.
According to the PA news agency, Heathrow’s chief executive, Thomas Woldbye, described the blaze which knocked out an electricity substation in Hayes late on Thursday evening as “as big as it gets for our airport” and that “we cannot guard ourselves 100%”.
The Metropolitan police said they are not treating the incident as suspicious while the London fire brigade (LFB) announced its investigation will now focus on the electrical distribution equipment.
Of the power outage, Woldbye said that a back-up transformer failed meaning systems had to be closed down in accordance with safety procedures so that power supplies could be restructured from two remaining substations to restore electricity enough to power what is described as a “mid-sized city”.
About 200,000 passengers have been affected by the closure of what is Europe’s busiest airport, reports the PA news agency.
Woldbye said the airport expects to return to “100% operation” on Saturday but British Airways said it is expecting about 85% of its Saturday Heathrow schedule to run (see 08.06am GMT).
He told reporters:
I’d like to stress that this has been an incident of major severity. It’s not a small fire.
We have lost power equal to that of a mid-sized city and our backup systems have been working as they should but they are not sized to run the entire airport.”
Asked if there is a weak point in Heathrow’s power system, he said:
You can say that but of course contingencies of certain sizes we cannot guard ourselves against 100% and this is one of them.
This has been a major incident. I mean, short of anybody getting hurt, this is as big as it gets for our airport and we are actually coming back quite fast I would say, when you consider the amount of systems that we have to shut down then bring back up and make sure that they’re safe.”
He added:
This is unprecedented. It’s never happened before and that’s why I’m saying it has been a major incident.”
The CEO said Heathrow will “look at anything we can learn from this” and encouraged the prime minister to ask him any questions he has.
British Airways (BA) said it expects to operate about 85% of its scheduled flights at Heathrow airport on Saturday, as it recovers from a lengthy closure of the travel hub after a substation fire, reports the PA news agency.
The airline 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 spokesperson 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% 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.
Our focus is on getting our customers and colleagues to where they need to be as quickly and as safely possible. We will be contacting all affected customers to advise them of their options, and we thank them for bearing with (us as we) work through these solutions.”
Despite criticism from some quarters, the UK transport secretary has defended the airport over the length of its closure, saying the “unprecedented situation” had been “totally outside of Heathrow’s control”.
Heidi Alexander said:
They have stood up their resilience plan swiftly, and they’ve collaborated closely with our emergency responders and the airline operators. They do have backup energy supplies, they have generators, diesel generators.
None of that failed on this occasion because that backup supply is designed to protect the critical key systems within the airport and not to provide power to the whole airport.
I would still advise anyone who has got a flight tomorrow [Saturday] to check in with their airline before travelling to the airport. But given the scale and magnitude of this incident, the response has been swift, although I do appreciate there will have been immense distress and disruption to a very large number of people.
British Airways: ‘huge impact’ on passengers expected for days
British Airways, which operates around half of all Heathrow flights, resumed long-haul services on Friday evening after power was restored.
The chief executive, Sean Doyle, said BA had “been forced to effectively ground our flying operation”, cancelling every short-haul and the majority of long-haul flights scheduled for Friday.
“Unfortunately, it will have a huge impact on all of our customers flying with us over the coming days,” he said.
Heathrow ‘open and fully operational’
Heathrow airport says “flights have resumed at Heathrow following yesterday’s power outage” and the airport is now “fully operational”.
It added that and that hundreds of additional staff have been drafted in to help clear the backlog of flights.
A statement read:
We can confirm that Heathrow is open and fully operational today. 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.
Former GCHQ chief ‘surprised’ at length of closure
David Omand, the former head of the Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ), said he was surprised at the length of the airport’s closure.
He told the BBC:
Given the importance of Heathrow I am surprised that the whole airport had to be shut for a day.
I mean, you could understand disruption whilst you change over to alternate systems and so on, but such a complete failure over the period of a day – and who knows the disruption may last longer – is a national embarrassment. It shouldn’t have happened.
London residents will be disturbed by more aircraft noise at night than normally permitted in the coming days after the Department for Transport lifted restrictions on night flights to ease the backlog.
Yesterday, Downing Street said there were “questions to answer” after a fire at an electrical substation closed down the airport, stopping more than 1,350 flights and disrupting the journeys of hundreds of thousands of passengers.
Counter-terrorism police were leading the investigation into the “unprecedented” incident that left Britain’s biggest airport unable to function as engineers tried to restore power, but said there was “no indication of foul play”.
Two people familiar with the investigation said officials did not believe the fire was the result of any criminal activity or a hostile state act and was more likely to be accidental. Police confirmed on Friday evening that the fire was not thought to be suspicious.
Flights begin landing at Heathrow after day of travel chaos
Hello and welcome back to our live coverage of the ongoing travel chaos caused by the closure of Heathrow airport in London yesterday.
On Saturday morning, flights began landing as the airport aimed to return to normal operation after shutting down over a loss of power.
Restrictions on overnight flights were temporarily lifted to help ease congestion, the Department of Transport said, and the airport said passengers should come to Heathrow on Saturday as they normally would.
British Airways, which has a major presence at Heathrow, said it expected to operate around 85% of its scheduled flights at the airport on Saturday. The airline would usually expect to run nearly 600 departures and arrivals on a Saturday but it is understood cancellations will be made, where possible, to high-frequency routes.
According to flight tracking website FlightRadar24, British Airways (BA) flight BA56 from Johannesburg, South Africa was the first regular passenger flight to land at Heathrow since Thursday evening, touching down at 4.37am on Saturday.
We’ll bring you the latest updates throughout the day as we get them.
