Heathrow airport in London is closed following a fire at a nearby electrical sub-station.
Not expected to open before midnight.
Other London airports (Gatwick, City, Luton, Stansted, Southend) appear to be working normally although the larger ones may be more congested due to diversions.
Yep, I was reading that a lot of flight have been diverted to Shannon, not exactly the easiest place to get back to the UK from.
Over 120 diversions to other European airports, Frankfurt, Paris, Amsterdam, Vienna, Shannon, Dublin, etc.
In addition numerous flights rtb return to their origin point.
It is going to be a real mess for days.
and what caused that fire?
Depends if you are reading the right or the left wing press. The right wing tabloids are screaming that it’s all down to the Russians. The left wing press say counter-terrorism are investigating but don’t, at this stage, consider it is down to foul play.
No, England is OK. Just don’t go via Heathrow!
I don’t know why the BBC does not mention towering flames come from burning oil in voltage and current transformers. Said oil is there for cooling reasons.
Get used to it. It will become the norm.
I’m a huge fan of Luton, I especially love how everyone looks down their nose at Luton as if Stansted or Gatwick are somehow the epitome of class.
For me it’s convenience and speed as my parents live in NW London (near the foot of the M1). So from landing to picking up my hire car, driving down the M1, hugging my mum, it’s 60 mins. Heathrow is much closer geographically but I’m looking at a minimum of 2 hours, even late at night.
The airport has reopened with a small handful of flights arriving and departing last night. Airport intends to operate a full schedule but that fails to recognise that aircraft and crews are out of place.
In addition to scheduled flights arriving there will be those diverted to other airports so capacity will be tested. It will be days before things are back to normal.
If you are travelling to or via Heathrow in the next few days check with your airline. For example BA cancelled one of their morning flights today.
What a surprise
Details matter. It seems to be the most boring part of engineering: documenting procedures/protocols.
Those words suggest there wasn’t a written protocol titled: “what to do in case of fire” available to everyone. People had not a consensus of what to do, not even a plan on what to do. So, while the power was available, it seems there was a bit of trial and error to get that power back.
Since, it’s the commercial aviation industry, much better to shut down that lose radar, air traffic control, communications, runway lights, or any other critical safety stuff during the trial & error to get power back.
The airport was closed for almost 24 hours, stoking anger from airlines.
Heathrow said while it was capable of running normally with power from two substations, it had to “reconfigure” networks to safely switch between outlets.
Very much this, only hindsight is 20/20.