Heathrow Airport Power Shutdown | Thousands of Flights Paused and Returned

Heathrow Airport Power Shutdown

Heathrow Airport which is normally one of the busiest in the world, but today, it was eerily silent with barely any planes landing or taking off. A fire at a nearby electricity substation shut Heathrow down entirely in the early hours of this morning. Some flights have resumed this evening and Heathrow says that there’ll be a full operation tomorrow. The government says it's temporarily lifting restrictions on overnight flights, but the day has been chaotic with around 200,000 passengers across the world having their journeys affected and 1,300 flights cancelled and diverted. The Metropolitan Police who are investigating the fire say that their initial assessment is that it isn’t suspicious but their inquiry is still in its early stages.

The first of reports state that the first sign that Heathrow Airport was getting back to normal after a dreadful day a diverted plane being flown back home before the first few flights started to takeoff. The chaos began just after 11 last night with oil fueled Inferno. It was one of the main electricity substations that power Heathrow the world's fifth busiest airport and a key part of teak’s critical national infrastructure.

Flames are getting higher the police declared a major incident soon after midnight, 180 people were evacuated from their homes. “The fire involved transformer comprising of 25,000 Liters of cooling oil fully alike. This created a major hazard due to the still live high voltage equipment and the nature of the oil fueled fire”.

The effect on Heathrow a catastrophic failure of the electricity supply two terminals had no power at all for hours. All the airport systems had to be restarted once an alternate supply had been connected. Heathrow grounded all planes and cancelled all incoming flights. Some lucky passengers were diverted to other airports but most were left stranded. Tori Danielle (a passenger) was flying back from America for her father's funeral. She says “I went to the map the World View map and I saw that we've done like a U-turn and I said to my husband "Hey we’re returning around, we're heading to Boston and he was like. No, no we’re not, obviously not, so I was like we are."

Workmen could be seen casually walking down what are usually some of the world's busiest runways. But although the fire had stopped all flights at Heathrow for 18 hours, the chief executive insisted the contingency plans had worked. “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 upend make sure that they're safe, it’s fueling systems its bridges it’s escalators elevators”.

Because the effect on a piece of critical national infrastructure was so serious, the investigation into what caused the fire is being led by counterterrorism police. But so far detectives are not treating it as suspicious and say there's no signoff foul play by a hostile state like Russia or a terrorist group. Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander MP said “We need to understand what caused an incident of this magnitude at an electricity substation that is very close to critical piece of national infrastructure”.

The key questions how did a single substation fire knock out such an important airport and what other bits of national infrastructure are vulnerable. UK’s first intelligence and Security co-coordinator Sir David Omand said “You could understand disruption and 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”.

With Heathrow's runway lights all working yesterday and the first flights taking off, the London Fire Brigade said its investigation was focusing on the electrical equipment at the substation, reports the reporter.

So yesterday night, a handful of flights had started but how long until normal service resumes well our transport correspondent Shawn Dilly replied when asked that it’s been a terrible day for passengers and what was the picture then, “Well chaos doesn’t seem quite the strong enough term does it. The picture now as you seen behind you, there have been planes taking off not all of them with passengers 858 the first passenger service to Saudi Arabia had taken off. Many of the flights behind us are relocating because part of the nightmare for airport managers and indeed passengers is that flights are in the wrong place aircraft are not where they’re supposed to be to take off. So if you picture a carefully choreographed flight plan all ripped up and they’re having to work either on contingency planning or improvised solutions to get the aircraft where they're supposed tube but it is good news for passengers Heathrow hopes to resume normal service tomorrow. Most Virgin flights for example expected to run but here's the advice tomorrow before you set off to Heathrow or indeed any airport it's good advice anyway right is check with your airline to see that you should proceed to the airport”.

Well some flights which were in the air as Heathrow shut down were diverted to other UK airports and others were turned back to their destinations as the day progressed many more passengers all around the world found themselves stranded their flights to Heathrow cancelled or new tickets for their destinations unavailable.

A reporter reports that on a day of chaos for passengers around the world departures boards flashed up as one no flights whatsoever in or out of Heathrow airport. Lucy (a passenger) was mid-flight heading to London from Delhi when her screen displayed a new destination they were going back to Delhi we would have to sit on the tarmac for about 90 minutes and yeah it's just starting to be chaos. From dawn people still arrived at Heathrow only to find it dark and deserted, hundreds of flights due to arrive had to be turned back. Work colleagues Andrew and Will left New York, only to find themselves 16 hours later via a pit stop to refuel in Canada back where they started, “We awoke to a picture on our phone of the plane doing a U-turn at this point we were 4 and a half hours in flight so right over the top of the Atlantic so we were quite shocked when we woke up and saw it was heading back in this direction” “So it was like we're getting hijacked here or what's going on so it’s not ideal but sort of can my lucky starts that wasn't the situation. Anna (another passenger) up at 3:00 a.m. to head out to New York for a joint birthday anniversary trip but her flight was cancelled “I’ve kind of cried all my tears now which is really sad but I've just I've made peace with it sometimes things just don’t go your way and today was just one of those one of those events”.

Many flights had to be diverted to any airport in Europe with space, here passengers flying to London from Cape Town instead found themselves disembarking in Barcelona.

Shy Ravindra (a passenger) filmed the queue while awaiting information “Everyone's a bit tired everyone’s a bit cranky, there was no there was no guidance as to where to go to get actual new hotel and flights.

 

Lucky few made it to a UK airport those least inconvenienced landed at London Gatwick even then it wasn't always smooth arrival. Another passenger said “well apart from waiting for your bags for 4 and 1/2 hours and not even getting a voucher for a cup of tea that was a bit annoying but everybody going on to Ireland and other connecting flights is having a nightmare”.

Few actually ended up closer to home like Claire (a passenger) diverted from Heathrow to Glasgow “I was meant to fly to Newcastle tonight so actually it's great for me so I’m closer to home my husband's on his way so everything's fine”. But for hundreds of thousands of passengers this travel misery looks set to continue.

 

Well as you've just read yesterday, the shutdown has inevitably had an impact across the world.

 

A reporter reports on how the emergency unfolded. “Europe’s busiest airport being taken out of action sparked a big global impact but let's zone in on where and when this all started? This is the North Hyde electrical substation, which powers Heathrow airport about a mile and a halfway. This is moments after the fire starts we verified that this video was filmed at 11:36 last night. Locals say that minutes later there is a second blast and then come tweets about the power being out, including from someone staying at a hotel next to the airport. London’s Metropolitan Police declares a major incident and straight after this is now 1:44 in the morning a message is sent out to all pilots that Heathrow has been shut. It's because of a major incident affecting the power supply. At this moment 120 flights are in the air heading for Heathrow. Less than an hour later the airport tweets that it will be closed until at least the end of Friday. Let’s have a look at how the impact of all this played out in this sped up footage. Many planes were destined for Heathrow but they all had to be diverted. The cities and airports that took in the highest number of Heathrow diversions included Frankfurt, Paris, Washington DC, London Gatwick and Amsterdam. Many other flights were cancelled as a knock-on effect. 30 flights were scheduled to fly between Amsterdam and Heathrow today. They have now all been cancelled this is Europe’s fourth busiest airport seven flights long-haul flights they were already airborne when the news came through were diverted here. But they aren’t expecting to receive any further diversions.

Each day there are more than 30 flights from the New York area airports to Heathrow joke is its busiest route and here at Newark International several flights that took off last night were diverted to Ireland and Scotland. One had to turn back halfway across the Atlantic. Those passengers still stranded are frustrated and exhausted, some though have been able to find alternate routes. All this global disruption was from one fire in West London.

 

Well the cost of yesterday’s disruptions expected to run into millions of pounds so what happens to those whose travel plans have been disrupted by Heathrow’s shutdown either directly or in the disruption expected in the days to come? A journalist replies saying “The rules around all this can be complicated. Firstly what to do if you're stranded most people affected will have tickets with a British or EU airline this means you’ll be able to get a refund for all or the parts of your ticket you haven't used but be aware if you do this the airline has no further duty of care to you. You’re on your own. If you still want to travel then your airline must offer youth choice of a replacement flight as soon as possible even with rival carriers. There may not be the same obligations though if your flight was coming to Heathrow with a Non-UK or non-EU airline. You could find yourself dependent on their terms and conditions. Knowing your rights is one thing the reality is another. Well people will be facing an almighty scramble for seats it’s going to be very difficult to speak to anybody from the airline you have legal right that the airline must get you home must get you to your destination but in practice that can be really hard to enforce. Now what you can do, if you're desperate is book your own flight home that is liable to be expensive and the warning is it may become time until you're able to claw that money back from the airlines.

 

Well what else are you entitled to again under UK law airlines have a strong duty of care if you're at the airport they’re obliged to offer free accommodation, if you have to stay overnight or fly the next day as well as transport there and back a reasonable amount of food and drink and refund the cost of any necessary phone calls. If your airline isn't able to arrange assistance you have the right to organize this yourself and claim back the cost the industry regulator advises people not to spend more than is necessary and keep all the receipts. What about compensation can you claim it airlines won't be paying anything extra because this situation will be seen as an extraordinary circumstance beyond their control but it's worth checking to see if you're covered by your travel insurance. You may also be able to recover some costs if you booked with a credit card so all in all a pretty stressful situation to navigate.

 

Well another reporter said when he was asked that as “You can see how’s a single fire managed to paralyze our biggest airport”. He said “Well that’s precisely the question lots of people are asking this evening if you look at some of the response a planning failure says the International Air Traffic Association, the National Infrastructure Commission says it reinforces the need for national resilience standards and questions to answer says number 10 no kidding , I mean this is the kind of stuff that keeps the people who run banks stock exchanges hospitals data centers, awake at night and what are what are the resilience plans. Now usually there is a disaster recovery a business recovery plan but that costs money and Heathrow is privately-owned company. So it's that kind of cost benefit of analysis how much money do you put into something that might happen once in a blue moon and by the way this is vanishingly rare something like this happening. How much money do you put into that but those that kind of cost benefit analysis I say are the exactly the kind of conversations that will go on long after the you know the travelers today will hopefully help safely get where they’re going those conversations will continue.