Warren Hu had just settled in his flight from New York in London, where he planned to visit his girlfriend, when he became one of the thousands of passengers whose trip was put in disarray early Friday due to fire near Heathrow airport.
The plane carrying Mr. Hu, a student in New York, would return to the United States, announced a crew member. “I am a little surprised, but we can find a solution, so I try to stay calm,” he said in a text message from the plane.
The fire, in an electrical substation near Heathrow, eliminated power at the airport, one of the busiest in the world, forcing the authorities to close it for everything on Friday. They warned that flight disturbances could last days.
Friday morning, a glance at the information board on the flights of Heathrow gave an idea of the size of the shock waves of the closure. Flights from Vietnam, Brunei and India were to land on Friday morning. The passengers expected to get on board the planes that took them to dozens of destinations: Tokyo and Singapore, Minneapolis and Miami.
In the Chinese city of Shenzhen, Lukas Zou was one of the travelers awaiting news from their flight now delayed towards London. Mr. Zou, who works in a commercial enterprise, said he learned the closure of Heathrow when he was about to get on his flight from Shenzhen Airlines, should leave at 1:45 p.m.
“With so much luggage, I don’t know if I should laugh or cry. I have already booked a hotel room in London, and that cannot be canceled,” said Mr. Zou. He said that Shenzhen Airlines organized hotel rooms for affected passengers and that their flight could now be reprogrammed at 2 am
Dozens of airlines go to Heathrow from around 180 places around the world. Many planes already in the air have been forced to turn to other airports.
According to Cirium, an aeronautical analysis company. Friday, 669 flights were to take off from Heathrow, said Cirium.
Heathrow is the main center of British Airways, which said it was already redirecting flights en route to Heathrow to other Airports from Great Britain, as far as possible.
At Fimicino Airport in Rome, dozens line up at the British Airways counter, hoping to know more about their flights. The airport board of directors showed that four British Airways flights were canceled on Friday morning.
A group of secondary school students from Arizona, planning to go home via Heathrow after a week in Italy, arrived in FiMicino to disappoint. “We did not discover that the flight had been canceled until half of our group had registered,” said Angel Brady, a chaperon during the trip. She said the group would miss its connection flight to Phoenix.
North American, Asian and Australian airlines have also been affected. American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, Air Canada and Jetblue were one of those who were to divert their jets for Heathrow or make them at the airports they had come.
Singapore Airlines said that a flight left for Heathrow at 9 am, local time on Friday was back in Singapore, and that five flights to London on Friday had been canceled.
The Qantas of Australia diverted two flights to Heathrow to Paris.
Nicholas Yong Contribution of Singapore reports.
