Heathrow flights resume after 300,000 left stranded

The first flights landed at Heathrow last night after the airport closed for more than 15 hours, leaving hundreds of thousands of passengers stranded worldwide due to a fire at a nearby power substation.

- ALEXANDER BUTLER AMY-CLARE MARTIN REBECCA WHITTAKER

The airport’s chief executive apologised to everyone who suffered disruption and defended the response to the “unprecedented” loss of power.

Counterterrorism police are investigating the blaze that upset the journeys of up to 300,000 passengers worldwide and caused chaos for airline schedules. Around 1,300 flights in and out of Heathrow – from Cairo to Sydney – were cancelled.

Transport secretary Heidi Alexander said there would be lessons to learn and she was in touch with home secretary Yvette Cooper over the disruption.

Thomas Woldbye, the boss of Heathrow – Europe’s busiest airport – said the fire at an electricity substation in Hayes in the early hours was “as big as it gets for our airport” and insisted: “We cannot guard ourselves 100 per cent.”

He revealed a backup transformer had failed and power supplies had to be restructured to restore enough electricity for what was effectively a “mid-sized city”.

The west London airport initially announced it would be closed all day but later said repatriation flights and a handful of British Airways long-haul flights would resume in the evening. Bosses say a full schedule will run today.

Questions about how the fire caused so much disruption will need to be answered, Downing Street said, but insisted dealing with the incident was the priority. A No 10 spokesperson said: “There are questions to answer. We expect those questions to be answered but our clarity right now is on this incident being appropriately dealt with.”

They added it “wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect checks on resilience” were being carried out at other major airports.