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The fire closes the London Heathrow Airport, more than 1k affected flights – National

A great fire near Heathrow airport in London eliminated the most busy flight center in Europe on Friday, which forced him to close the whole day and interrupting global trips by hundreds of thousands of passengers.

At least 1,350 flights to and from Heathrow were affected, said the Fumtradar 24 flight monitoring service, and the impact would probably last several days as passengers try to reprogram their trips and the work of the airlines to carry aircraft and crew to the right places.

The authorities do not know what caused the fire, but so far they have no evidence that it was suspicious.

The residents in western London described listening to a great explosion, followed by a fireball and smoke clouds, when the fire crossed the electrical substation near the airport.

Some 120 flights were in the air when the closure was announced, and some turned around and others deviated to Gatwick airport on the outskirts of London, Charles de Gaulle airport near Paris or the Shannon airport in Ireland, the tracking services were shown.

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Lawrence Hayes was three quarters of the road to London from New York when Virgin Atlantic announced that they were being diverted to Glasgow.

“It was a red -eyed flight and I had already had a full day, so I don’t even know how long I have been awake,” Hayes told BBC when he got off the plane in Scotland. “Fortunately, I managed to get my wife and she booked me a train ticket to return to Euston, but it will be an incredibly long day.”

Heathrow is one of the most busy airports in the world for international trips. He had its most occupied January recorded earlier this year, with more than 6.3 million passengers, more than 5 percent since last year.

Even so, the interruption on Friday did not reach the one that caused the eruption of 2010 of the Eyjafjallakull volcano of Iceland, which threw clouds of ashes into the atmosphere and created the transatlantic air travel chaos for months.

Fire under control but impact in recent days

It was too early to determine what caused the huge fire to about 2 miles (3 kilometers) from the airport, but “there is no suggestion” of dirty game, said the Secretary of Energy, Ed Miliband.

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The London Fire Brigade was leading the investigation with the help of the Metropolitan Police, authorities said. A person familiar with the investigation said that anti -terrorism detectives were also involved as a matter of course because the cause was unknown. They talked about anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case publicly.

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Miliband said the fire, which took seven hours to control, also eliminated a supporting source of the airport. Heathrow said in a statement that he had no choice but to close the airport for the day.


“We expect a significant interruption in the next few days, and passengers should not travel to the airport under any circumstance until the airport reopens again,” said the airport.

Heathrow was in the heart of a shorter interruption in 2023, when Great’s air traffic control system was beaten by a breakdown that slowed off the takeoff and landings throughout the United Kingdom on one of the most busy travel days of the year.

Anita Mendiraratta, an aviation consultant, said the impact of the closure will be felt for two or four days as the airlines, cargo carriers and crews move to the position and passengers are reserved again.

“As soon as the airport opens at midnight tonight, it is not just about resuming with tomorrow’s flights, it is the accumulation and implications that have taken place,” said Mendiratta. “The crew and airplanes, many are not supposed to be at this time. Therefore, the recalculation of this will be intense.”

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Deviant, canceled and in limbo

In Heathrow, a family of five who was traveling to Dallas appeared with the hopes that his flight home, still listed as delayed, would take off.

But when Andrea Sri brought her brother, sister -in -law and her three children to the airport, the police told them that there would be no flight.

“It was a loss of time. Very confusing,” said Sri, who lives in London. “We try to contact British Airways, but they don’t open their telephone line until 8 am”

Travelers who were diverted to other cities found themselves trying to reserve trips onwards to London. Qantas Airlines sent flights from Singapore and Perth, Australia, to Paris, where he said he would buse people to London, a process that probably also includes a train transport under the La Mancha channel.

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Ryanair budget airline, which does not work as Heathrow, said he added eight “rescue flights” between Dublin and Stansted, another London airport, to transport passengers stranded on Friday and Saturday.

National Rail canceled all trains to and from the airport.

Flights usually begin to land and take off in Heathrow at 6 in the morning due to night flight restrictions. But the heavens were silent on Friday morning.

“Living near Heathrow is noisy, there are airplanes every 90 seconds or so, plus the constant buzzing of traffic, but you get used to, to the point of not noticing,” said James Henderson, who has lived next to the airport for more than 20 years. “Today is different, you can listen to birds sing.”

Blaze illuminated the sky and the dark houses

Matthew Muirhead was working on Thursday night near Heathrow when he went out with a colleague and noticed that the smoke rose from an electrical substation and heard sirens cry.

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“We saw a shiny white flash, and all the city’s lights came out,” he said.

The London Fire Brigade sent 10 engines and around 70 firefighters to control the fire and about 150 people were evacuated from their homes near the power plant.

“This was a very visible and significant incident, and our firefighters worked tirelessly in challenging conditions to control the fire as quickly as possible,” said commissioner Pat Goulbourne.

Scottish and Southern electricity networks said in an X post that the blackout affected more than 16,300 homes.

The United Kingdom government earlier this year approved to build a third track at the airport to boost the economy and connectivity to the world.


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