The first plane has landed at London’s Heathrow Airport since the fire, Associated Press reports.
The British Airways jet touched down on Friday about 18 hours after the airport was closed due to a massive power outage.
Britain London Fire A British Airways plane approaches landing as authorities announced a partial resumption of flights after a fire at a nearby electrical substation has caused a closure of Europe's busiest airport in London, Friday, March 21, 2025. Photograph: Kin Cheung/AP
The blog is closing now. Here’s a summary of today’s main events, following a fire on Thursday night at an electricity substation in Hayes, west London, which left Heathrow airport without electricity.
Flights have resumed to and from Heathrow airport, after National Grid found “an interim solution”. Some passengers travelled for over 32 hours to reach the airport, after spending time “circling” in the air.
Overnight restrictions, which limit the number of night-time take-offs and landings, have been temporarily lifted to ease congestion.
The airport is expected to be “back in full operation” on Saturday and passengers are being asked to come to the airport as they normally would.
There are “no suggestions of foul play” in the cause of the fire, according to the transport secretary, Heidi Alexander. She added that the situation was “unprecedented”.
Shares in airlines including British Airways, Lufthansa and Ryanair have fallen
It is estimated the closure will cost the aviation sector about £20m a day.
Disruption is expected to continue over the coming days, the British Airways chair Sean Doyle said, adding that more than 670 flights carrying around 103,000 passengers were affected by the fire.
Backup systems at the airport “worked the way they should”, Heathrow Airport chief executive, Thomas Woldbye, said as he admitted that the power supply of Heathrow is “a bit of a weak point”.
Around 200,000 passengers have been affected by the closure, with over 1,300 flights disrupted.
The Metropolitan police has now confirmed that the counter-terrorism command is leading inquiries as to the source of fire at the substation in Hayes, but stressed there is “currently no indication of foul play.”
Downing Street has said there are “questions to answer” after a fire at an electrical substation closed down London Heathrow airport, stopping around 1,300 planes and disrupting the journeys of hundreds of thousands of global passengers.
Counter-terror police are leading the investigation into the “unprecedented” incident that left Britain’s biggest airport unable to function as engineers tried to restore power, but said there was “no indication of foul play”.
Two people familiar with the investigation said officials do not believe the fire was the result of any criminal activity or a hostile state and was more likely to be accidental.
Heathrow announced it would partially reopen on Friday evening, but airlines warned that the closure could continue to have a “huge impact” on passengers in the coming days. The airport said it hoped to run a full operation on Saturday.
Ministers acknowledged the “immense distress and disruption” caused to passengers, vowing “we will learn the lessons”.
At last, I can share some happy pictures of planes landing and passengers arriving:
Britain London Fire People watch a British Airways plane landing as authorities announced a partial resumption of flights after the fire. Photograph: Kin Cheung/AP
Smiling travellers arrives at Terminal 5 Photograph: Kin Cheung/AP
Travellers arrives at Terminal 5 Photograph: Kin Cheung/AP
A British Airways on the runway Photograph: Kin Cheung/AP
The UK’s critical infrastructure is not hardy enough and the government needs to strengthen Britain’s power networks to be able to withstand major shocks, experts have warned.
Alan Mendoza, the executive director of the Henry Jackson Society, a London-based thinktank focused on security and democracy in Europe, said the incident is particularly worrisome given recent comments by Britain’s security services that Russia is conducting a reckless campaign of sabotage across Europe.
“The U.K.’s critical national infrastructure is not sufficiently hardened for anywhere near the level it would need to be at to give us confidence this won’t happen again,” he said. “I mean, if one fire can shut down Heathrow’s primary systems … it tells you something’s badly wrong with our system of management of such disasters.”
Robin Potter, an expert on resilience at London-based think tank Chatham House, said that successive governments have been slow to respond to repeated recommendations from the National Infrastructure Commission to strengthen the ability of Britain’s power, communications, transport and water networks to withstand major shocks.
“We still have yet to see a kind of clear response from the government to those recommendations,” he said. “And we hope that maybe in the government’s upcoming resilience review, which we expect will be published at some point this year, it might seek to address some of those questions.”
Mendoza said that the goal should be to have backup systems that can be put in place quickly to mitigate the disruption caused by any so-called black swan – or unpredictable – events.
“The reality is there are always going to be issues that surprise you — black swans, as it were,” he said. “The key to it is not necessarily to have to predict black swans, because in many cases they are unpredictable, but it’s about having the fortitude and the sort of bend in the system to be able to get back up to working speed very quickly.'’
The closure is estimated to have disrupted the travel plans of 200,000 people.
It has also had an impact on the airport’s ability to transport goods.
About 4,000 tons of cargo have also been stranded by the closure, according to Anita Mendiratta, an aviation and leadership consultant.
She estimated that it would take two to four days to clear all the backlogs.
“This is an extreme situation where the entire aviation ecosystem is impacted,” she said.
“There will be two things that will be happening as a priority No. 1. First is airport operations and understanding, from an electrical system point of view, what has been impacted, if anything,” she said. “Did anything short out, for instance? What needs to be reactivated? And then how do you literally turn the airport back on again? Passenger and cargo.”
In addition, she noted, “there’s the issue of actually managing the human component of it. You have passengers that are impacted, crew are impacted and operations, so being able to remobilise everything.”
The London fire brigade has said that 10 fire engines and 70 firefighters responded to a fire at the substation that was reported at 11:23pm on Thursday.
The blaze has been contained but firefighters will remain at the scene throughout the day today, the fire brigade said.
Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said the “catastrophic” fire appeared to have knocked out a backup generator as well as the electrical substation that supplies power to Heathrow Airport.
“It’s obviously an unprecedented event,” Miliband told Sky News. “Obviously, with any incident like this we will want to understand why it happened and what if any lessons it has for our infrastructure,” he added.
The situation at Heathrow has caused “travel chaos” at airports in Ireland, the country’s deputy premier has said.
About 50 flights to Dublin, Belfast City Airport and City of Derry Airport were cancelled.
Shannon Airport in the west of Ireland has facilitated six diverted flights which had originally been scheduled to land at Heathrow, involving flights from Toronto, Atlanta, Bridgetown Barbados, Boston, Orlando and Newark.
Speaking to media on Friday, Tanaiste Simon Harris paid tribute to those involved in resolving the situation.
He said: “The route between Dublin and Heathrow is the second busiest route in Europe and therefore that caused a significant challenge today for commuters to and from Dublin in relation to Heathrow.
“But it does seem that everything that could have been done to try and swiftly get things back on track has happened and I’m grateful to all of those involved in making that happen.”
Dublin Airport said in a statement that further disruption to flights between Dublin Airport and Heathrow over the coming days is possible.
“We continue to monitor developments at Heathrow and remain in close consultation with affected airlines regarding when flights between Dublin Airport and Heathrow may recommence,” it said.
City of Derry Airport said on Friday evening: “We are awaiting confirmation of our flight operation to London Heathrow tomorrow.
“We ask passengers to continue to check with their airline regarding their flight status before coming to the airport. All other routes from City of Derry Airport to Birmingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester and Liverpool continue to operate as usual.”
Restrictions on overnight flights have been lifted
Restrictions on overnight flights have been temporarily lifted to help ease congestion at Heathrow, the Department for Transport has said in a post on X.
According to Heathrow’s website, there is no formal ban on night flights but since the 1960s, the Government has placed restrictions on them.
There is an annual limit of 5,800 night-time take-offs and landings between the hours of 11.30pm and 6am as well as a nightly limit, which caps the amount of noise the airport can make at night, PA reports.
The DfT also said it had allowed passengers to use rail tickets flexibly.
Travel consultant Paul Charles has told Reuters that Heathrow’s closure could cost the aviation sector about £20m a day, with no guarantee the airport would reopen on Saturday.
“Heathrow is such a vital piece of the UK’s infrastructure that it should have fail-safe systems,” he added.
Tony Cox, an international risk management consultant, said: “I can’t remember a piece of critical infrastructure being wholly shut down for at least a day because of a fire. I can’t think of anything comparable.”
A passenger has finally touched down at the airport after travelling for over 32 hours.
Joshua Richardson’s flight from Quantum, Perth, was diverted to Paris at 4am today, where over 400 passengers from two planes were put on coaches to their final destinations.
He arrived in Heathrow after travelling for over 32 hours in total, still needing to get to Oxford.
The 31-year-old told PA News: “We first found out because the in-flight entertainment changed from Heathrow to Paris, and people were like, what’s going on?
“The pilot said Heathrow had lost power – the only place we could divert was Paris.
“We had to circle Paris for a bit, and you could see other planes circling too.
“There’s going to be some stories of people being messed up by this, so I won’t complain. All I am is tired and cranky.”
Passengers on board Qantas flights to Heathrow Airport from Singapore and Perth on Friday were diverted to Paris before taking buses to London, the airline has said.
A Qantas spokesperson said: “Our Singapore-London and Perth-London services were diverted to Paris today, with buses arranged to take customers on to London.
“Our teams are working hard to support impacted customers and we thank them for their patience.”
The first plane has landed at London’s Heathrow Airport since the fire, Associated Press reports.
The British Airways jet touched down on Friday about 18 hours after the airport was closed due to a massive power outage.
Britain London Fire A British Airways plane approaches landing as authorities announced a partial resumption of flights after a fire at a nearby electrical substation has caused a closure of Europe's busiest airport in London, Friday, March 21, 2025. Photograph: Kin Cheung/AP
