Up to 300,000 passengers facing cancellations as U.K.'s Heathrow Airport closes due to fire

Thomson Reuters

· Posted: Mar 21, 2025 5:18 AM EDT | Last Updated: 7 minutes ago

Britain's Heathrow Airport said it would beryllium closed each of Friday aft a immense occurrence astatine a adjacent electrical substation wiped retired power, disrupting formation schedules astir the world.

The London Fire Brigade said astir 70 firefighters were tackling the blaze successful the westbound of London, which caused a wide powerfulness outage at Heathrow, Europe's busiest and the world's fifth-busiest airport. 

Huge orangish flames and plumes of achromatic fume could beryllium seen shooting into the entity from a powerfulness presumption astir 3 kilometres from the airport. It took firefighters astir 7 hours to get the blaze nether control, the London Fire Brigade said. By aboriginal greeting the roads around Britain's biggest airdrome were mostly deserted, except for immoderate passengers walking distant with their luggage.

"Our occurrence investigators volition statesman their probe and we volition proceed moving intimately with our partners to minimize 
disruption and enactment the community," the occurrence brigade said.

The fire, which was reported conscionable aft 11 p.m. section time on Thursday, forced planes to divert to airports crossed Britain 
and Europe, portion galore long-haul flights simply returned to their constituent of departure.

Cause of occurrence unclear

Heathrow said the airport, which was owed to grip 1,351 flights during the day, flying up to 291,000 passengers, would 
enactment closed until midnight arsenic it was experiencing a significant power outage.

Heathrow usually opens for flights regular astatine 6 a.m. owed to nighttime flying restrictions.

Some 120 flights were successful the aerial erstwhile the closure was announced, with immoderate turned astir and others diverted to Gatwick Airport extracurricular London, Charles de Gaulle Airport successful Paris oregon Ireland's Shannon Airport, tracking services showed.

French hose Air France cancelled 8 flights to and from Heathrow, portion Dutch hose KLM said it cancelled 3 instrumentality flights.

British Airways itself had 341 flights scheduled to onshore at Heathrow on Friday.

"This volition intelligibly person a important interaction connected our cognition and our customers, and we are moving arsenic rapidly arsenic imaginable to update them connected their question options for the adjacent 24 hours and beyond," it said.

The origin of the occurrence was not yet known. 
 
Energy Minister Ed Miliband said the "catastrophic" occurrence had prevented the power back-up strategy from moving and that engineers were working to deploy a 3rd back-up mechanism. 
 
"With immoderate incidental similar this we volition privation to recognize why it happened and what if immoderate lessons it has for our infrastructure," helium told Sky News.

Flights diverted astir the world

Industry experts said tourism, question and commercialized would beryllium further disrupted astir the world, arsenic flights volition beryllium cancelled oregon delayed owed to craft being retired of position.

"Heathrow is 1 of the large hubs of the world," said Ian Petchenik, spokesperson for formation tracking website FlightRadar24. "This is going to disrupt airlines' operations astir the world."

The fire forced planes to divert astir the world.

Travel experts said the disruption would widen acold beyond Heathrow.

"Heathrow is 1 of the large hubs of the world," said Ian Petchenik, spokesperson for FlightRadar24. "This is going to disrupt airlines' operations astir the world."

Airlines' cautiously choreographed networks beryllium connected airplanes and crews being successful circumstantial locations astatine circumstantial times. Dozens of aerial carriers volition person to hurriedly reconfigure their networks to determination planes and crews around.

"The different question is, 'What volition airlines bash to woody with the backlog of passengers?'," said question manufacture expert Henry Harteveldt with Atmosphere Research Group. "It's going to beryllium a chaotic mates of days."

Qantas Airways sent its formation from Perth to Paris, a United Airlines New York formation headed to Shannon, Ireland and a United Airlines formation from San Francisco was owed to onshore successful Washington, D.C. alternatively than London.

Some passengers turned to societal media. Adrian Spender, who works astatine British retailer Tesco, said successful a station connected X that helium was connected an Airbus A380 that had been headed for Heathrow.

"#Heathrow no thought wherever we are going yet. Currently implicit Austria."

Heathrow, and London's different large airports, person been deed by outages successful the past successful caller years, astir precocious by an automated gate failure and an aerial traffic system meltdown, some successful 2023.

Heathrow had its busiest January connected grounds earlier this year, with much than 6.3 cardinal passengers, up much than 5 per cent from the aforesaid play past year. January besides was the 11th period successful a enactment that it averaged implicit 200,000 passengers a day, with the airdrome citing trans-Atlantic question arsenic a cardinal contributor.