London’s Heathrow Airport has resumed operations, with the first flight of the day departing at 6 a.m. on Saturday. Three flights were scheduled to leave before 9 a.m. The first, bound for Zurich, departed 10 minutes late, followed by a flight to Madrid, which took off six minutes behind schedule. The third, heading to Lisbon, left with a 23-minute delay.
Even as flights resume, investigations continue into the chaos caused by a fire at an electricity substation, which forced Heathrow officials to suspend all services. Planes en route to Heathrow scrambled to find alternate landing sites across Europe, while others were forced to return to their points of origin. The disruption left passengers stranded worldwide, waiting for normal operations to be restored.
Experts question reliance on single power source
Aviation and infrastructure experts have raised concerns over Heathrow’s heavy reliance on a single power source for critical airport operations. The airport draws electricity from three substations, each equipped with a backup transformer. However, when the North Hyde substation caught fire, its backup system also failed, leading to a total shutdown.
The exact cause of the fire remains unclear, though several theories have emerged. Counter-terror officers were initially involved in the investigation, sparking speculation about possible sabotage. However, Scotland Yard has since ruled out foul play, stating it is “not treating this incident as suspicious.”
The London Fire Brigade has echoed this assessment, describing the Thursday night fire as “non-suspicious.”
A Politico report, citing sources familiar with the investigation, suggests that the fire may have been caused by human error. “It’s always cock-up rather than conspiracy,” one source told the publication, hinting at a possible mistake by an electrical engineer.
Heathrow is fully operational, extra flights added
A Heathrow spokesperson confirmed on Saturday that the airport is now fully functional.
“We can confirm that Heathrow is open and fully operational today. Teams across the airport continue to do everything they can to support passengers impacted by yesterday’s outage at an off-airport power substation,” the spokesperson said.
In an effort to ease the backlog, additional flights have been added to Saturday’s schedule, accommodating an extra 10,000 passengers.
Heathrow CEO issues apology
Heathrow Chief Executive Thomas Woldbye apologized for the disruption and outlined the extensive efforts required to restore airport operations.
“We are very sorry about all the inconvenience. We lost a major part of our power supply. This was an incident of major severity,” Woldbye said.
He explained that the airport lost power equivalent to that of a mid-sized city, and engineers had to “restructure” the supply by rerouting electricity from the two remaining substations. Restarting thousands of complex airport systems took “an enormous amount of time,” he added.
Despite the recovery, the incident has raised concerns about the resilience of critical infrastructure at one of the world’s busiest airports, prompting calls for a comprehensive review of Heathrow’s power systems.