{"id":5276,"date":"2025-03-22T09:31:07","date_gmt":"2025-03-22T09:31:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/?p=5276"},"modified":"2025-03-22T09:31:09","modified_gmt":"2025-03-22T09:31:09","slug":"flights-resume-at-london-heathrow-after-daylong-closure-sparked-travel-chaos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/?p=5276","title":{"rendered":"Flights resume at London Heathrow after daylong closure sparked travel chaos"},"content":{"rendered":"
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LONDON — <\/span>London Heathrow Airport said it was \u201cfully operational\u201d on Saturday, after an almost daylong closure<\/a> sparked by an electrical substation fire. But airlines warned that severe disruption will last for days as they scramble to relocate planes and crews and get travelers to their destinations.<\/p>\n

Inconvenienced passengers, angry airlines and concerned politicians sought answers<\/a> about how one seemingly accidental fire could shut down Europe\u2019s busiest air hub<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have hundreds of additional colleagues on hand in our terminals and we have added flights to today\u2019s schedule to facilitate an extra 10,000 passengers traveling through the airport,\u201d Heathrow said in a statement. \u201cPassengers traveling today should check with their airline for the latest information regarding their flight.\u201d<\/p>\n

British Airways, Heathrow\u2019s biggest airline, said it expects to operate about 85% of its scheduled flights at the airport on Saturday.<\/p>\n

More than 1,300 flights were canceled and some 200,000 people stranded Friday after an overnight fire at a substation 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) away from the airport cut power to Heathrow, and to more than 60,000 properties.<\/p>\n

Residents in west London described hearing a large explosion and then seeing a fireball and clouds of smoke when the blaze ripped through the substation. The fire was brought under control after seven hours, but the airport was shut for almost 18. A handful of flights took off and landed late Friday.<\/p>\n

Police said they do not consider the fire suspicious, and the London Fire Brigade said its investigation would focus on the electrical distribution equipment at the substation.<\/p>\n

Still, the huge impact of the fire left authorities facing criticism that Britain\u2019s creaking infrastructure is ill-prepared to deal with disasters or attacks.<\/p>\n

Heathrow is one of the world\u2019s busiest airports<\/a> for international travel, and saw 83.9 million passengers last year.<\/p>\n

Passengers on about 120 flights were in the air when the closure was announced found themselves landing in different cities, and even different countries.<\/p>\n

Friday\u2019s disruption was one of the most serious since the 2010 eruption of Iceland\u2019s Eyjafjallajokull volcano<\/a>, which spewed clouds of ash into the atmosphere and shut Europe\u2019s airspace for days.<\/p>\n

Mark Doherty and his wife were halfway across the Atlantic when the inflight map showed their flight from New York\u2019s John F. Kennedy Airport to Heathrow was turning around.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was like, you\u2019re joking,\u201d Doherty said before the pilot told passengers they were heading back to New York.<\/p>\n

Doherty called the situation \u201ctypical England \u2014 got no back-up plan for something happens like this. There\u2019s no contingency plan.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LONDON — London Heathrow Airport said it was \u201cfully operational\u201d on Saturday, after an almost daylong closure sparked by an electrical substation fire. But airlines warned that severe disruption will last for days as they scramble to relocate planes and crews and get travelers to their destinations. Inconvenienced passengers, angry airlines and concerned politicians sought […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5277,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5276"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5278,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5276\/revisions\/5278"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}