Passengers Stranded As London Heathrow Airport Closed Over Fire Incident

Britain’s Heathrow Airport was closed all day Friday after a fire at a nearby electrical substation knocked out its power, disrupting flights for hundreds of thousands of passengers at United Kingdom’s busiest travel hub.

Flight tracking service FlightRadar 24 said at least 1,350 flights to and from Heathrow were affected, and the impact was likely to last several days as passengers tried to reschedule their travel.

Some 120 flights were in the air when the closure was announced, with some turned around and others diverted to Gatwick Airport outside London, Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris or Ireland’s Shannon Airport, tracking services showed.

A passenger, Lawrence Hayes was three-quarters of the way to London from John F. Kennedy International in New York when Virgin Atlantic announced they were being diverted to Glasgow.

“It was a red-eye flight, and I’d already had a full day, so I don’t even know how long I’ve been up for,” Hayes told the BBC when he got off the plane in Scotland.

“Luckily I managed to get hold of my wife and she’s kindly booked me a train ticket to get back to Euston, but it’s going to be an incredibly long day.”

The London Fire Brigade said that the fire at a power station about 2 miles from the airport had been brought under control about seven hours after it had erupted in a ball of flames.

“We don’t know the cause of this fire. It’s obviously an unprecedented event,” Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said.

Miliband said the fire had also knocked out the airport’s backup power supply.

Heathrow said in a statement that the fire had forced it to close the airport for the day.

“We expect significant disruption over the coming days, and passengers should not travel to the airport under any circumstances until the airport reopens,” the airport said.

Heathrow is one of the world’s busiest airports for international travel. It had its busiest January on record earlier this year, with more than 6.3 million passengers, up more than 5% from the same period last year.