LONDON — Europe's busiest airport has announced it will remain closed throughout Friday after a power shutdown forced more than 100 flights to divert in mid-air.
A fire at an electrical substation close to Heathrow, west of London, began just hours before the airport was about to open at 6 a.m. local time, and the loss of power will affect at least 1,000 flights over the course of the day, and hundreds of thousands of passengers.
London's Metropolitan police have said there's no indication of foul play so far, but its counter terrorism command is now involved in the investigation.
Several fire engines and dozens of firefighters are battling that blaze in the nearby town of Hayes, while an airport spokesperson has warned passengers to avoid any transit to Heathrow.
More than 100 flights that were already en route to Heathrow have been diverted, according to data from the flight tracking website Flightradar24, with United landing one flight from New York in Shannon, Ireland, while Australian carrier Qantas diverted two planes to Paris.
Dozens of international airlines will be forced to reconfigure their flight networks, calling up aircraft, crew and pilots in other locations to avoid further cancellations in the coming days.
"We expect significant disruption over the coming days," said a Heathrow spokesperson in a public statement, adding that "passengers should not travel to the airport under any circumstances until the airport reopens."
Authorities say the airport will remain closed until at least midnight local time on Friday.
Heathrow typically hosts around 200,000 passengers a day, with transatlantic travel to the United States responsible for a sizeable portion of those passenger numbers, and the British government recently approved plans to build a third runway at Heathrow to help boost economic growth.
United said that seven of its scheduled flights had returned to their airport of origin, the Associated Press reported, while another flight tracking website, FlightAware," showed both Delta and American had cancelled flights from New York's John F. Kennedy International.
The UK rail company, National Rail, has stopped all trains to Heathrow, while more than 16,000 homes in the surrounding area have also lost power, according to local provider Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks.
Video uploaded to social media sites shows a vast conflagration at the substation facility, with the London Fire Brigade reporting hundreds of calls from local residents concerned about the significant amount of smoke emanating from the site. More than 100 people have been evacuated from their homes since the first emergency calls were made late Thursday.
In 2023, a problem with the UK's air traffic control system caused similar delays at several U.K. airports, forcing landings and takeoffs to be spread out on what was then one of the busiest travel days that year.
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