The closure of Heathrow London airport for the fire in the substation that supplies electricity collapsed this Friday the global air traffic, with about 200,000 passengers and 1,300 affected flights, and left numerous questions to be resolved.
On Friday morning, the aerodrome announced that it experienced an “important power cut” following a fire that occurred in the North Hayes substation, four kilometers from Heathrow, which forced him to cease his operation and cancel or divert all the flights planned for March 21.
Heathrow’s is the airport with the highest traffic in Europe, with about 84 million users a year, and had 679 arrivals and 678 departures scheduled for today, according to the FlightRadar24 flight monitoring service in its X account, which estimated that more than 200,000 passengers would be affected.
Although Heathrow was going to remain closed until midnight on Friday, finally the air node announced after 16:00 GMT that he had recovered the electricity supply and that he would begin to resume his flights limitedly.
He also indicated that he expected to operate “full performance” since this Saturday, prioritizing the repatriation and relocation of aircraft.
Among the airlines most harmed by the closure of the airport was British Airways, which operated more than half of canceled routes -a 670 -and that could restore the service of eight long distance flights from the afternoon of this Friday.
To allow the exit of more airplanes, Heathrow also lifted at the last minute its restrictions on night flights.
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Criticism of planning
The International Air Transport Association (IATA), which represents 260 airlines worldwide, questioned that one of the most busy airports in the world can depend solely on an energy source and does not have an alternative.
“If that is the case, as it seems to be, then it is a clear planning failure by the airport,” Iata, Willie Walsh, judged in a statement.
In response to these criticism, Heathrow CEO, Thomas Woldbye, defended the management of the incident by the London airport and assured that it is “impossible” to protect 100 % of large contingencies such as the one occurred this Friday.
Woldbye said that the magnitude of the incident was similar to that of a medium -sized city if it was left without electricity and said that Heathrow reserve systems functioned as they should, but do not have the ability to supply the entire airport.
“Only behind someone was injured, this is the biggest thing that can happen to our airport, and I would say that we are returning quite fast, when you take into account the amount of systems that had to be turned off and then restart and make sure it was safe,” he added.
The Heathrow incident also caused reactions at the political level. The Minister of Energy, Ed Milliband, came to qualify it as an “unprecedented event” and added that the Executive must inspect the causes, protection and resilience in important institutions such as the British airport.
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The fire of the substation, which also left tens of thousands of surrounding homes without electricity, now leaves multiple questions to be resolved to establish the cause of the fire.
The anti -terrorism unit of the London Metropolitan Police (MET) has assumed the direction of fire investigation and pointed out that, although for the moment there are no indications “that point to a sabotage of the North Hyde substation, it maintains all open hypotheses.
This decision responds, according to a police spokesman, to “the location of the substation and the impact that this incident has had on a critical national infrastructure.”
With EFE information
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