Heathrow Airport in London, one of the world’s busiest air hubs, was set to resume a full day of service on Saturday. But after a fire at an electrical substation halted operations for most of Friday, global travel remained disrupted.
The police were still investigating what had caused the fire at the substation in western London that cut power to tens of thousands of nearby homes as well as to Heathrow. The Metropolitan Police said there was no immediate indication of foul play.
British Airways, Heathrow’s largest carrier, said late Friday that it expected about 85 percent of its nearly 600 departures and arrivals scheduled for Saturday to go ahead but that delays were likely to affect all passengers. The airline said it was also canceling flights on high-frequency routes where passengers have more rebooking options.
It took 16 hours to end the disruption that began in the early morning hours of Friday. More than a thousand flights were diverted, wreaking havoc on more than a quarter of a million people’s travel plans, Cirium, an aviation data company, estimated.
Arrivals resumed Friday evening. A Heathrow representative said significant delays were expected in the coming days as airlines tried to return their planes to their usual schedules.
“Please do not travel to the airport unless your airline has advised you to do so,” the airport said on Friday. “We hope to run a full operation tomorrow and will provide further information shortly.”
Planes from all over the world were heading to Heathrow early Saturday, including from Hong Kong, South Africa and Brazil, according to Flightradar24, a tracking website.
Thomas Woldbye, Heathrow’s chief executive, said that at the time of the substation fire, a backup transformer was working as it should when the airport lost power but that it was not enough to run the entire facility. The London Fire Brigade said that it had been difficult to extinguish the blaze because the substation held thousands of gallons of cooling oil.
Britain’s National Grid said that the substation’s network was reconfigured to partly restore power temporarily to the airport and other customers.
