More than 1300 flights have been affected by the closure, for a day, of London's Heathrow airport, one of the largest and busiest airports in the world, following a fire in a nearby electrical substation. The cause of the fire is not yet known.
The large fire on Friday morning at the substation at Hayes in west London, has left thousands of houses and buildings without power. The airport has warned of `significant disruption' over the coming days and told passengers not to travel under any circumstances until it reopens.
“Today’s total closure of London-Heathrow will affect at least 1,351 flights to/from LHR,” a flight tracker said in a post. “That doesn’t include any flights that might be cancelled or delayed due to aircraft being out of position.”
Aviation experts say the closure was unheard of in the industry. London’s other airports, such as Gatwick, would traditionally take diverted flights; however, because Heathrow's large-scale operations, other airports near London do not have the capacity to absorb all of its operations.
Even if Heathrow resumed operations by Saturday, the cascading flight disruptions would ripple through global aviation schedules for days, if not longer.
