Heathrow fire to cause weekend of misery as thousands still face flight disruption ...Middle East

Travel misery caused by a massive power failure that closed Heathrow airport and stranded thousands of passengers is set to last for days, despite some flights resuming on Friday evening.

Heathrow said its teams had worked tirelessly to reopen the world’s fifth-busiest airport after it was forced to close entirely on Friday after a huge fire engulfed a substation near the airport on Thursday night, with travellers told to stay away.

The airport had been due to handle 1,351 flights, flying up to 291,000 passengers, but planes were diverted to other airports in the UK and across Europe, while many long-haul flights returned to their point of departure.

After power was restored to the airport this afternoon, Heathrow said that it was “safely able to restart flights, prioritising repatriation and relocation of aircraft”.

Flights resumed on Friday evening, with the airport prioritising customers who were diverted to European airports.

Thomas Woldbye, the airport’s CEO, apologised to passengers but said that there were “contingencies of certain sizes we cannot guard ourselves against 100 per cent”.

Heathrow said it hope to run full schedule on Saturday.

However, Sean Doyle, the chairman of British Airways, said that the chaos would have “a substantial impact on our airline and customers for many days to come, with disruption to journeys expected over the coming days”.

“We have flight and cabin crew colleagues and planes that are currently at locations where we weren’t planning on them to be,” he told reporters.

BA operates the largest share of flights from the airport at 51 per cent, followed by Virgin Atlantic and Lufthansa.

John Grant, chief analyst at travel data platform OAG, warned of “significant” further disruption at Heathrow, saying: “It’s one of the world’s largest airports with a complete day’s operating programme cancelled.”

Aviation consultant John Strickland likened the disruption to what happened after the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, when flights were grounded across the US, saying: “It’s a contained version of 9/11.”

The closure not only caused misery for travellers but provoked anger from airlines who questioned how such crucial infrastructure could fail.

BA cancelled 670 flights carrying around 107,000 customers on Friday- with similar numbers of passengers booked to travel over the weekend.

The industry is now facing the prospect of a financial hit costing tens of millions of pounds, and a likely fight over who should pay.

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“You would think they would have significant back-up power,” one top executive from a European airline told Reuters.

There were initial fears the fire may have been deliberately started, perhaps by Russian agents, and counter terrorism police were leading the inquiries, given their capabilities and the critical nature of the infrastructure.

However, the Metropolitan Police and the London Fire Brigade said they were not treating the fire as suspicious, although inquiries continue.

According to the LFB, the blaze spread after 25,000 litres of cooling oil in the substation’s transformer caught fire. By morning the transformer could be seen smouldering, doused in white firefighting foam.

London Fire Brigade (LFB) received the first reports of the fire at 11.23pm on Thursday.

Some 120 aircraft heading to the airport at that time were forced to either divert or return to their point of origin, measures which saw passengers on board Qantas flights to Heathrow from Singapore and Perth diverted to Paris before taking buses to London.

As the scale of the outage became clear, airlines including jetBlue, American Airlines, Air Canada, Air India, Delta Air Lines, Qantas, United Airlines, BA and Virgin were diverted or returned to their origin airports in the middle of the night, according to data from flight analytics firm Cirium.

Airline experts said the last time European airports experienced disruption on such a large scale was the 2010 Icelandic volcanic ash cloud that grounded some 100,000 flights.

Some airlines such as United Airlines and Air Canada said they expected flights to be able to depart for Heathrow late last night, to arrive this morning, and eight long-haul BA flights were set to take off from Heathrow last night.

The Metropolitan Police said they are not treating the fire as suspicious, though counter-terrorism police are leading the ongoing investigation due to the severity of the incident.

Following that initial confirmation from the Met, the LFB announced its investigation will focus on the electrical distribution equipment.

Of the power outage, Woldbye said that a back-up transformer failed meaning systems had to be closed down in accordance with safety procedures so that power supplies could be restructured from two remaining substations to restore electricity enough to power what is described as a “mid-sized city”.

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Downing Street said it “wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect checks on resilience” are being carried out at other major airports.

Heathrow defended its power system as a source said it had “multiple sources” of energy including back-up diesel generators and uninterruptible power supplies that “operated as expected”.

However, the systems are not designed to run a “full operation” which is why the airport had to close, the source added.

Dr Barry Hayes, a professor in electrical power systems at University College Cork, said electrical substation fires are not unheard of and can be caused by overheating.

“Fires at electrical substations can be caused by the breakdown in insulation between high voltage electrical equipment in the substation and/or overheating, usually due to an equipment failure,” he said.

“This outage appears to have been the result a large transformer fire in the North Hyde substation. Most power transformers use oil as a cooling and insulation medium. Electrical faults or excessive heat can cause this oil to ignite.”

Missed family events

Travellers stranded by the Heathrow shutdown have missed out on time with loved ones, work events and the chance to spend Ramadan with family.

Sufyan, who was meant to be flying to Pakistan for Ramadan with his family, said he has not heard from his airline about whether the flight will be rebooked.

“If they can confirm to me I’m flying out tomorrow, I’ll get a hotel somewhere in London. But if they don’t say anything, then I kind of just have to go home,” he said.

Emilia, who had travelled from Swansea to Heathrow to visit her long-distance partner in Denmark, said “every day counts”.

“We only see each other two weeks, four times a year. But we’re trying really hard to stay positive,” she said.

Hotels accused of ‘price gouging’ during emergency

Hotels have been accused of price-gouging during the emergency situation at Heathrow.

With the airport closed unexpectedly lots of people are stranded and need to stay in a hotel overnight while they wait to see if their flight will be rescheduled.

The Holiday Inn is charging more than £500 for a room tonight. The same room next Friday is only £87.

A search on booking.com shows Radisson Red at Heathrow is charging £555 for a room tonight. The same room next Friday is only £132 for the night.

Airlines have also been accused of engaging in “opportunistic” flight pricing.

Ryanair launched eight extra “rescue” flights between Stansted and Dublin which went on sale at 9.30am on Friday morning.

However, passengers complained the airline was charging more than €300 for a one-way flight.

On Friday afternoon British Airways was offering a flight to Shannon for £429 – the same flight a week later was £113.

easyJet customer Dr Ashleigh Wiseman said the flight she was attempting to book from Gatwick to Zurich increased by £140 on Friday morning as the Heathrow crisis was unfolding.

Train companies such as Northern, LNER and TransPennine Express said they would allow passengers diverted to other UK airports from Heathrow to travel on their services for free.

An easyJet spokesperson said: “easyJet’s pricing is demand led and demand for flights today has been very high as a result of the Heathrow closure. We do not artificially raise fares.”

IHG, Radisson, Eurostar, BA and Ryanair were contacted for comment.

The fire at the substation in Hayes, west London, knocked out power at Terminal 2 and 4 as well as 5,000 homes nearby.

One local, known only as Lydia, told The i Paper that her disabled brother is living in supported accommodation in Hayes with “no power”, meaning his medical equipment is not working.

She said: “My brother is profoundly disabled and he lives in a small block of flats of supported living accommodation.

“They’ve got no power, there’s an alarm going off and they can’t cut it off… His medical equipment isn’t working.

“His carers had to use little bottle of gas to heat some water to wash him this morning.

“He’s on the first floor with another wheelchair user and there’s no lift.

“Nobody seems to care that some really vulnerable people are struggling.”

Hillingdon Council confirmed it had to evacuate around 150 people last night due to the fire and while most have been able to stay elsewhere, around a dozen are being put up in hotels tonight.

The blaze was brought “under control” by 6.30am on Friday, but it remained 10 per cent alight on Friday.

A total of 67,000 households were left without power 150 people were evacuated to a rest centre.

The London Fire Brigade received its first report of a fire in a high-voltage substation near Heathrow Airport at 11.23pm on Thursday 20 March.

It said the fire involved a transformer comprising of 25,000 litres of cooling oil which was set fully alight, creating a “major hazard” due to the still live high voltage equipment and the nature of an oil-fuelled fire.

It took all night for firefighters to bring the blaze under control, sending 10 fire engines and 70 firefighters.

The Metropolitan Police declared a major incident at 12.42am.

The Fire Bridage said the incident remains “very visible and significant”, with firefighters working tirelessly in hazardous conditions overnight to bring the fire under control.

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