'Fully operational' after fire shutdown: Heathrow Airport

Heathrow Airport said it was "fully operational" on Saturday but there were some delays and cancellations as Europe's busiest air hub resumed operations a day after a power station fire caused travel mayhem.

- Agence France-Presse

LONDON:

The electricity substation blaze knocked out power at the London airport, closing it for most of Friday before some flights began to arrive and take off later in the evening.

The shutdown affected thousands of passengers around the world and raised serious questions about the reliability of one of the UK's most critical pieces of infrastructure.

"We can confirm that Heathrow is open and fully operational today," an airport spokesperson said on Saturday morning. "Teams across the airport continue to do everything they can to support passengers impacted by yesterday's outage at an off-airport power substation."

About 1,350 flights were affected by Friday's closure, according to the Flightradar24 tracking website. Around 120 Heathrow-bound planes were in the air when the closure was announced and had to be diverted.