More than 1,000 flights will be affected
Some more details from Flightradar24, which says that more than 1,000 flights will be impacted by the sudden closure of Heathrow today.
“Today’s total closure of London-Heathrow will affect at least 1,351 flights to/from LHR,” the flight tracker said in a post on Bluesky, “That doesn’t include any flights that might be canceled or delayed due to aircraft being out of position.”
Key events
Ryanair and Eurostar have decided to added extra connections to their schedules to help people stranded in London after the closure of Heathrow.
Ryanair said it would operate four extra flights between Dublin and Stansted on Friday afternoon and another four on Saturday morning.
In a statement to the Guardian, Eurostar confirmed plans to run one additional service from London to Paris (departing 3pm) and from Paris to London (departing 8pm), with 882 seats on each train.
‘Highly rare and unusual’ substation fire, scientists say
Helena Horton
Environment reporter
The substation fire which brought Heathrow to a standstill was highly rare and unusual, scientists have said.
“Fires like this are not common at all, as equipment is monitored to check its health and the equipment gets replaced once it starts showing signs of age that mean it could be dangerous (for obvious safety reasons),” said Dr Robin Preece, reader in future power systems at the University of Manchester, “Until the reports are completed by the equipment owners, it’s not possible to know the cause of the failure and the fire.”
Oil is used as an electrical conductor in these substations, he said, which means if there is a fire it becomes large and difficult to control: “The whole substation would probably need to be switched off and de-energised in order to let firefighters safely deal with the blaze. You cannot fight a fire in an electrical substation that is energised. Certainly all of the equipment adjacent to the transformer on fire would need to be de-energised.”
He said that “pretty much everyone” will be “back on supply very quickly” as there are sufficient alternate supplies on the electricity grid.
Dr Paul Cuffe, engineering professor at University College Dublin suggested Heathrow should have more resilient energy infrastructure to prevent these situations:
“One could argue that a critical piece of national infrastructure like Heathrow deserves special grid connection arrangements to secure its supply of electricity further. For instance, sometimes critical loads like this are fed from two separate substations to provide redundancy when outages happen. I am not familiar with the exact connection arrangements for Heathrow airport but neither setup would surprise me.”
“It is ultimately a political and economic question to determine the right level of capital investment into grid infrastructure to avoid the problems that outages like this cause. Redundant power supplies for an airport the size of Heathrow do not come free!”
Flights will be diverted across the UK and Europe, but because Heathrow is so massive, these airports will likely run out of capacity, said Dr Guy Gratton, associate professor of aviation and the environment, at Cranfield University.
He explained: “All airline flights must declare their destination and one or two ‘alternates’, which are airports they will go to in the event of problems at their destination. The UK has many large airports and flights have been diverting from Heathrow to airports at least as far away as Manchester. Alternates don’t have to be in the UK so for example Frankfurt or Schiphol may be used. With such a major airport closing however, there is significant risk of running out of capacity at those places.
“The absolute priority will of course be safety, with convenience to the passengers inevitably secondary to that. This is inevitably going to lead to significant disruption and frustrations.”
‘Significant disruption over coming days,’ London mayor says
London mayor Sadiq Khan said that Heathrow has warned “of significant disruption over the coming days,” as he thanked emergency services for responding to the fire at a substation.
Here is his statement in full:
Heathrow Airport is closed today due to a power outage caused by a fire at a nearby electrical substation. The fire is having a significant impact on the local area with the airport closed, other businesses affected and homes left without power.
I know this will be hugely frustrating for the many thousands expecting to travel to and from Heathrow today, the families who have had their power cut and the commuters who have had their journeys disrupted.
I’d like to thank the emergency services who have been working hard overnight to tackle the fire, and I remain in close contact with them, as I have been overnight. Thankfully, there are no reports of any injuries.
Electricity suppliers are working hard to restore power, but Heathrow Airport have said they will be closed all day and has warned of significant disruption over the coming days.
Passengers are advised not to travel to the airport under any circumstances and I urge Londoners to follow the advice of emergency services and their travel providers.
Closed Heathrow airport – in pictures
A local resident said a “bright flash of white” from the electrical substation fire in Hayes preceded an immediate power cut across the area.
Mathew Muirhead was working a night shift on Thursday when he noticed smoke rising from the electrical substation.
“We were stood outside our branch in Hayes and my colleague noticed smoke coming over the trees,” the 42-year-old told PA.
“It was 23.30 when we saw it, we were heading to West Drayton, so we went to check it out, we heard the sirens as we were headed to Bulls Bridge roundabout.
“We saw a bright flash of white and all the lights in town went out.”
“My wife rang me and told me our electric was out – I found out a few hours later that Heathrow was completely shut down.”
Tell us: have you been affected by London’s Heathrow airport closure?
If you’ve been impacted by the Heathrow airport closure as a traveller or live nearby and are experiencing a power cut, we’d like to hear from you.
UK energy secretary Ed Miliband continues his morning media round, and he told Good Morning Britain that today’s outage “makes Heathrow look quite vulnerable,” adding it was necessary to “learn lessons … about not just Heathrow, but how we protect our major infrastructure.”
He was quoted by PA Media as saying:
“What it makes me believe is we’ve got to understand why this happened, and we’ve got to work out what the lessons are for the resilience of our infrastructure.”
Lisa O’Carroll
in Dublin
Ireland has accommodated half a dozen transatlantic flights to Heathrow.
Flights originally scheduled to land at Heathrow taking passengers from Toronto, Atlanta, Bridgetown, Barbados, Boston, Orlando and Newark, have landed at Shannon Airport in the west of Ireland.
Shannon Airport chief executive Mary Constance said the first flight arrived at 4.26 this morning with another arriving at 5.40.
“It is an evolving situation and the airlines are grappling with it. Those particular ones that were already en route [to Heathrow] obviously divert then subsequent to that we are making decisions to turn back or change routing,” she told RTE’s Morning Ireland.
Some 34 flights to and from Dublin Airport and Heathrow were cancelled, the airport authority has said.
Emergency services at North Hyde substation in Hayes – in pictures
‘Significant impact’ of Heathrow closure, British Airways say
British Airways has posted this statement on its social media:
Due to a power outage in the London Heathrow area, London Heathrow Airport is currently closed.
As a result, customers due to travel from Heathrow on Friday are advised not to travel to the airport until further notice.
This will clearly have a significant impact on our operation and our customers and we’re working as quickly as possible to update them on their travel options for the next 24 hours and beyond.
‘No suggestion there is foul play,’ energy secretary says
We are also getting another line from UK energy secretary Ed Miliband doing the morning media round: he has told the LBC Radio that “there is no suggestion that there is foul play.”
You may wonder whether that we know why this happened. At the moment, the focus is on restoring the power, we don’t yet have any understanding or real understanding of what caused … the fire.
He was then pressed further if he can rule out foul play, to which he responded:
I have no… There’s no suggestion that there is foul play.
Adding:
That is, I mean, the conversation I’ve had is with the National Grid, the chief executive of the National Grid, and certainly that’s what he said to me.
Hayes fire under control, investigation into causes under way, London Fire Brigade confirms
London fire brigade has now confirmed that the fire in Hayes is “now under control,” adding that the emergency services “will remain on scene throughout the day.”
“Our fire investigators will begin their investigation & we will continue working closely with our partners to minimise disruption and support the community,” they said in a social media update.
A statement on their website confirmed the fire was brought under control by 6:28 GMT, and added that “The Brigade’s fire investigators are working closely with the Metropolitan Police Service on the investigation into the cause of the fire.”
‘Catastrophic’ fire affected Heathrow, says UK energy secretary
UK energy secretary Ed Miliband appeared on BBC One in the last half hour, where he called the fire as “catastrophic,” and explained that it also affected “the potential backup generation” for the airport.
He said:
The [National] Grid is doing everything they can to restore power as quickly as they can to Heathrow.
Heathrow is saying that the airport will be closed today until midnight, as you know, but the grid are doing everything they can to seek to restore power.
My understanding from Grid is 100,000 homes were without power as a result of this fire overnight.
The figure they gave to me a short time ago was that that’s down now to 4,000 but obviously this is a fast moving situation.
Transport minister urges passengers not to travel to Heathrow
UK transport secretary Heidi Alexander has just commented on the Heathrow closure, urging passengers not to travel to the airport.
She said:
I’m receiving updates on the fast-moving situation at Heathrow Airport.
I’m grateful to emergency services responding to the fire, and National Grid for working to restore power to the airport and homes.
I’d urge passengers not to travel to the airport, and contact their airline.
London Stansted airport remains open
London Stansted airport is still open but has not yet received any requests for diverted flights. A spokesperson said: “London Stansted is currently operating as normal, we have capacity for a small number of diverts but as yet we haven’t received any requests.”
