London's Heathrow Airport resumes some flights after fire causes "significant power outage"
London's Heathrow Airport — one of the busiest airports in the world — resumed some flights after being closed for most of Friday after a fire at a nearby electrical substation caused a power outage. An estimated 200,000 travelers were affected by the shutdown.
The first plane landed around 6:30 p.m. local time, the Associated Press reported.
"We're running all flights as scheduled, including additional flights to support with reconnecting passengers and repositioning aircraft," a statement on Heathrow's website read early Saturday morning.
British Airways, whose main hub is Heathrow, said eight long-haul flights were cleared to depart Friday evening.
The airport said the fire late Thursday night at an electrical substation supplying the airport had caused a "significant power outage," but on Friday afternoon, an airport spokesperson said teams had "worked tirelessly since the incident to ensure a speedy recovery" and that the facility was "safely able to begin some flights later today." After the announcement, at least one plane could be seen taxiing.
"Please do not travel to the airport unless your airline has advised you to do so," the statement said. "We will now work with the airlines on repatriating the passengers who were diverted to other airports in Europe. We hope to run a full operation tomorrow and will provide further information shortly."
The spokesperson noted that, "as the busiest airport in Europe, Heathrow uses as much energy as a small city, therefore getting back to a full and safe operation takes time."
Heathrow had initially said no flights would go in or out until the end of Friday, warning that it expected "significant disruption over the coming days."
At around 9 p.m. local time on Friday, approximately 5% of the fire near the airport was still burning, the London Fire Brigade said.
London's Metropolitan Police said there was "currently no indication of foul play," but that counterterrorism police would lead the investigation into the substation fire that shut down Europe's busiest airport.
The London Fire Brigade said Friday that the fire was believed to be "non-suspicious" and that its investigation will "now focus on the electrical distribution equipment."
"Given the location of the substation and the impact this incident has had on critical national infrastructure, the Met's Counter Terrorism Command is now leading enquiries. This is due to the specialist resources and capabilities within that command that can assist in progressing this investigation at pace to minimize disruption and identify the cause," the police said in a statement.
Tracking services showed flights being diverted to London's Gatwick Airport, Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris and Ireland's Shannon Airport. British Airways had earlier said the closure would have a significant impact on its operations and customers, adding that it was working as quickly as possible to update travelers on their options for the "next 24 hours and beyond."
The FlightRadar24 live tracking website showed at least 1,350 flights into and out of Heathrow were affected. According to the online service, the top route to and from Heathrow is the connection with New York's JFK International Airport, with 146 flights every week.
"I saw the time on the screen started to increase," passenger Tori Dunzello, who had been on a flight to the U.K. to attend her father's funeral, told CBS News partner network BBC News. "I turned on my world map, and I started seeing a big U-turn, and I turned around and said to my husband: 'I think we're turning around.'"
Dunzello said her flight was diverted to Canada, and she expected it to refuel and return to New York.
The impact of the Heathrow power outage was likely to last several days, leaving thousands of passengers forced to find alternate travel plans.
"We're talking about several days' worth of disruption to get the planes recovered and start using them again to move planned and disrupted passengers," Aviation consultant John Strickland told The Associated Press, comparing the outage to "a contained version of 9/11 or, to an extent, the Icelandic volcanic eruption" in 2010 that shut down European airspace.
"Heathrow being such a busy airport and full, there's no kind of wriggle room for getting out of these kind of things," Strickland told the AP.
Britain's National Rail service canceled services to and from Heathrow for the day, though some passengers could still be seen attempting to enter the airport on foot on Friday. They were turned away by police.
The London Fire Brigade said 10 fire engines and around 70 firefighters were sent to tackle the blaze at a substation near the airport in the west London town of Hayes. It started late Thursday night, and by about 8 a.m. local time, the brigade said it was "under control, but we will remain on scene throughout the day."
The power outage affected "a large number of homes and local businesses, and we are working closely with our partners to minimise disruption," Assistant Commissioner Pat Goulbourne said in a statement, adding that firefighters had led 29 people to safety from nearby properties, and around 150 people were evacuated.
Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks said in a social media post that the power outage affected more than 16,300 homes, but by Friday afternoon, the National Grid power distributor said the network had "been reconfigured to restore all customers impacted, including the ability to resupply the parts of Heathrow airport that are connected to" the substation in Hayes.
"This is an interim solution while we carry out further work," National Grid said, adding: "We are continuing to work closely with all stakeholders to manage this incident, and are focused on returning to normal resilience levels as soon as possible."
Authorities said it wasn't clear what had sparked the blaze at the substation, but local residents reported hearing explosions.
"I was about 100 yards from the explosion," local resident Vaneca Sinclair told the BBC. She said she had been getting ready for bed in her home at about 11:30 p.m. Thursday evening (7:30 p.m. Eastern) when "suddenly there was this huge bang and the house just shook."
"When the first explosion went off... I literally just ran out of the house," another local resident, Savita Kapur, told the BBC. She said she got her elderly mother in her car to drive her to her sister's house. "When I was driving up my road the second explosion went off and the whole ground shook."
"We will have to look hard at the causes, and also the protection and the resilience that is in place for major, major institutions like Heathrow," U.K. energy secretary Ed Miliband told the BBC earlier Friday.
The latest numbers from travel data provider OAG Aviation show Heathrow is the fifth busiest airport in the world this month. Earlier this year, it reported its busiest January on record, serving over 6.3 million passengers and averaging over 200,000 passengers a day. More than 1.2 million of those passengers traveled between the U.K. and the U.S.
