Air travelers face disturbance days while Heathrow is struggling to recover from a fire that has closed the busiest airport in Europe, resulting in 1,300 flight cancellations and raising questions about the resilience of the United Kingdom infrastructure.
The airport was fully reopened for flights on Saturday morning and the first planes took off just after 6 am.
But disturbances are still expected when the carriers began the logistical challenge to restart their operations with planes, crews and passengers out of purpose and dispersed around the world.
British Airways, the largest Heathrow airline, said it expected to cancel around 15% of its flights to airport on Saturday.
The fire in a local electricity base caused a power failure that closed the airport in the early hours of Friday morning and forced incoming flights to detach themselves to other centers, such as Paris and Amsterdam, or return to their original airports.
Some transatlantic flights found themselves wherever space was available, including a flight from Air Canada from Toronto diverted to Goose Bay, in Newfoundland.
At its peak, 70 firefighters attacked hell which started shortly before midnight Thursday and sparked 25,000 liters of cooling oil.
“This is an unprecedented situation, and we have not seen a heathrow closure of this scale for many years,” said Sean Doyle, Managing Director of BA.
The Metropolitan Police in London said that his command to combat terrorism were investigated, given “the location of the substation and the impact of this incident on critical national infrastructures”.
Friday evening, the MET added that, although the responsibility remained in the hands of the police to fight terrorism, they were not at the moment to treat the incident as a suspect.
“The investigation into the cause of the fire remains at its beginnings,” said strength. “After the initial assessment, we do not deal with this incident as a suspect, although requests remain in progress.”
The closure after the failure of a local substation also raised questions about Heathrow’s resilience, and if other parts of the national infrastructure of the United Kingdom were also vulnerable.
Willie Walsh, former boss of BA and current chief of the International Air Transport Association, criticized what he said was a “clear planning failure” which had left critical infrastructure according to a single source of food.
Ruth Cadbury MP, president of the Restricted Transport Committee, told the BBC that the incident “raises questions about infrastructure resilience”.
Heathrow leaders rejected these claims. They said that the airport had drawn electricity from three substations, as well as backup generators, who offer enough emergency power to keep the tracks open, but not enough to perform the airport’s full operations for an extended period.
Thomas Woldbye, Heathrow CEO, said the airport had undergone a major gravity incident. ” He added: “This is unprecedented. It has never happened before … We do not close the airport unless we have serious safety problems.”
While only one of the three substations fueling power, Heathrow was forced to close thousands of electrical systems. “The restart of all these systems in a safe way … takes a long time,” said Woldbye. “We cannot protect ourselves 100% [against every contingency]”He said.
Ba, which operates more than half of Heathrow’s flights, was by far the most affected airline and told passengers to prepare longtime disturbances.
“This incident will have a substantial impact on our airlines and customers for many days to come, with a disruption of the expected trips in the coming days,” said Doyle.
The airline had planned to operate more than 670 flights carrying around 107,000 customers only on Friday, with similar figures scheduled for the weekend. More than 200,000 passengers use Heathrow every day.
The complete closure sent passengers rushing to find other ways of traveling. Some airlines, including Ryanair and Easyjet, as well as the Eurostar Train Service, have put additional seats to their services, while British rail operators reported peaks in train reservations.
Some have turned to private jets. Toby Edwards, co-PDG of the private jet charter company Victor, said that the request for theft had “jumped”, including a passenger who paid $ 75,000 to travel the Atlantic.
While the demand has skyrocketed hotels near Heathrow was accused of having increased prices for more than four years to £ 700 per night.
The Actions of European Airlines closed Friday after the closure of Heathrow, notably International Airlines Group, the parent of British Airways, who dropped by almost 3%.
Additional report by Lucy Fisher, Kieran Smith, Akila Quinio and Jamie John
