The flights in British Heathrow began to appeal late on Friday after it took out the power supply fire and closed the most European airports for this day, wandered thousands of passengers and caused travel disturbances all over the world.
Heathrow said that her teams worked tirelessly to reopen the fifth airport in the world after being forced to close after a huge fire that swept a sub -station near the airport on Thursday evening, where the travelers asked to get away.
The airport was scheduled to deal with 1,351 flights on Friday, as up to 291,000 passengers, but the planes were converted to other airports in Britain and through Europe, while many long flights returned to their departure point.
Heathrow said that there will be a limited number of flights on Friday, most of them focused on transporting aircraft and bringing aircraft to London.
“Tomorrow morning, we expect to return to full operation, to operate by 100 % for a normal day,” said Thomas and Oldby, CEO of Heathrow. “What I would like to do is apologize to many people who were affected by their travel … We are very sorry for all this inconvenience.”
Police said that although there was no indication of wrong play, anti -terrorist officers were leading investigations, given their capabilities and the critical nature of the infrastructure.
Not only causes the misery of travelers, but also angered the airlines that wondered how this decisive infrastructure failed.
The industry is now facing a possibility of a financial blow to tens of millions of pounds, and it is likely to be a battle around who must be paid.
“You might think they have a great backup,” a senior European airline executive told Reuters.
Woldbye from Heathrow said that the regulations and procedures of backup had succeeded as it should.
He told reporters outside the airport: “This (the power source) is a little weakness,” he told reporters outside the airport. “But of course, emergency situations of certain sizes we cannot guard ourselves against 100 % and this is one of them.”
When asked about who will pay, he said that there are “existing procedures”, adding, “We do not have opponents in force for accidents like this.”
British Transport Minister Heidi Alexander said the accident was outside the control of Heathrow.
“They have stopped their flexibility plans very quickly and are working in close cooperation with all emergency employees and airlines,” she told reporters.
“There are no suggestions at the moment of play, but you will be able to investigate an open mind.”
transformation
Airlines, including Jetblue, American Airlines, Air Canada, Air India, DeTa Air Lines, Qantas, UNITED Airlines, Iag British Airwink and Virgin to their original airports in the middle of the night, according to the data of Cirium Cirium.
The stocks fell into many airlines, including American transport companies.
Aviation experts said that the last time European airports were disturbed by this range on a large scale, the Icelandic Embrays cloud for the year 2010, which focused on about 100,000 flights.
While restarting flights, that will be some time before all the services of the scheduled passengers return to normal.
“We have colleagues, aircraft and aircraft that are currently located in the locations where we did not plan,” said Sean Doyle, CEO of British Airways, the largest airline in Heathrow, who was 341 flights to land there on Friday.
“Unfortunately, it will have a great impact on all our customers who fly with us in the coming days.”
The fire brigade said that the cause of the fire was not known, but 25,000 liters of refrigeration oil in the sub -station adapter had caught fire. By morning, the transformer can be seen wilting, dyed in a white foam to combat fire.
The passenger passengers in London and faced the possibility of any days of disturbances were scrambling to take alternative travel arrangements.
“It is very stressful,” “Robin Utre, 39, a professor, was to fly home to New York.” I am concerned about the amount that will cost me this to fix this. “
The prices jumped in the hotels surrounding the Heathrow, where reservation sites offer rooms for 500 pounds ($ 645), or nearly five times the levels of regular price.
An invitation to wake up
Executive officials of the airlines, electrical engineers and passengers asked how to force the British gate to the world to close with one fire, no matter how big.
Heathrow, and other major airports in London, have been subjected to other electrical power outages in recent years, the last of which is the failure of the automatic gate and the collapse of the air traffic system, both in 2023.
Philip Ingram, a former British army intelligence officer, said Heathrow’s inability to continue to make open weakness in the decisive national infrastructure of Britain.
“It is an invitation to wake up,” he told Reuters. “There is no way that Heathrow should be completely taken out due to failure at one sub -station.”
Willie Walsh, Chairman of the International Airlines IATA and former British Airways head, said Heathrow had allowed passengers again.
Heathrow said it contains diesel generators and unexpected energy supplies in place to land in planes and safely evacuate passengers. All of these systems work as expected. But with the airport consuming as much as a small city, he said he could not operate all its operations safely on reserve systems.
A spokesman for Prime Minister Kiir Starmer said that there are questions to answer how the accident will occur and there will be a comprehensive investigation.
