LONDON (AP) – London’s Heathrow Airport said it was “fully operated” on Saturday. Closed almost all day It was caused by a fire at an electric substation. However, thousands of passengers remained stuck and the airline warned that serious confusion would last for several days as they were rushing to move planes and crews and take travelers to their destinations.
Travel Mayhem on Friday raised concerns about the UK’s ability to withstand disasters and attacks on critical infrastructure. Inconvenient passengers, angry airlines, all involved I want an answer How a seemingly coincidental fire can be achieved Shut down Europe’s busiest air hub.
“This is a huge embarrassment for Heathrow Airport. It’s a huge embarrassment for the country that a single current fire can have such a devastating effect,” said Toby Harris, a Labour Party politician who heads the National Preparatory Committee, which campaigns to improve resilience.
Heathrow said, “We have hundreds of additional colleagues on hand at the terminal and have added flights to today’s schedule to promote another 10,000 passengers.” I advised passengers to check with the airline before going to the airport.
British Airways, Heathrow’s largest airline, said it is expected to operate around 85% of its 600 scheduled flights at the airport on Saturday. “It is extremely complicated to restore our size operations after such a serious incident.”
Many passengers were able to resume their stalled journey, but others remained at Limbo.
Kansas City’s Laura Frickey was on a family holiday in Ireland when she learned that her father had passed away. On Saturday, she was stuck at Heathrow after her BA flight to Chicago was cancelled at the last minute.
“I’m very frustrated,” she said. “This was my first big holiday with my children since my husband passed away.
More than 1,300 flights have been cancelled, and about 200,000 people were stranded towards more than 60,000 facilities on Friday after a overnight fire at a substation two miles (3.2 km) from the airport, cutting power to Heathrow and stranded towards more than 60,000 facilities.
Explosions and fire reveal a wider problem
West London residents have explained that they will see fireballs and clouds of smoke when the flames tore through the substation after hearing the big explosion. The fire was controlled after 7 hours, but the airport was closed for almost 18 minutes. A few flights took off and landed late Friday.
Police said they did not consider the fire to be suspicious, and the London Fire Service said the investigation would focus on the substation’s electrical distribution equipment.
Still, the major impact of the fire caused authorities to face questions about the UK’s creaking infrastructure. The government admitted that there are questions that authorities should answer, saying that a rigorous investigation is needed to ensure that “the scale of this disruption will never happen again.”
Preparatory Committee Harris said airport closures point to a wider issue regarding the UK’s economy and infrastructure.
“The last 40, 50 years have tried to make services more efficient,” he said. “We removed redundancy and simplified the process. We moved towards a kind of “just in time” economy.
“There are factors that you need to make sure that they are available “just as a precaution.” You have to plan for things to go wrong. ”
Heathrow CEO Thomas Waldy said he was “prideful” at the way airport and airline staff responded.
“Remember, the situation wasn’t created at Heathrow Airport,” he told the BBC. “The airport hasn’t been closed for days. We’ll be closed for hours.”
One of the busiest airports
He said the emergency-designed backup power supply on Heathrow worked as expected, but operating the entire airport wasn’t enough.
“That’s how most airports work,” said Woldbye, who insisted that “the same thing will happen at other airports” in the face of a similar flame.
Heathrow is one of them The busiest airport in the world Last year we saw 83.9 million passengers for an international trip.
Friday’s turmoil was one of the most serious since 2010 Eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Icelandclosed European airspace for several days.
When the closure was announced on Friday, around 120 passengers were in the air and landed in various cities and even different countries.
Mark Doherty and his wife were mid-Atlantic Ocean when they showed a flight to Heathrow from John F. Kennedy Airport in New York.
“I seemed to be kidding,” Doherty said before the pilot told passengers he was back in New York.
Doherty said this situation was “typical England – we didn’t have a backup plan for anything like this. There’s no emergency plan.”
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Kwiyeon HA, Associated Press Journalist at Heathrow Airport, contributed to this report.
