Heathrow closure could cost millions, disrupt flights for days

Big journey disruption at London’s Heathrow airport attributable to an influence lower Friday could take a number of days to treatment and cost thousands and thousands of kilos, specialists estimated.

Europe’s busiest air hub was dropped at a standstill after a hearth at an electrical energy substation lower energy to Heathrow, elevating questions over the resilience of its infrastructure.

Again to regular when?

The reopening of the airport won’t imply the fast return of standard flights, as a backlog of planes return to right places and passengers are rerouted from canceled flights.

“It is extraordinarily difficult… the disruptions will final two to 4 days,” Anita Mendiratta, an aviation advisor to the United Nations tourism company, advised AFP.

“It is not solely airport operations, however passengers, crew, cargo, plane all of which are very a lot displaced in the event that they’ve needed to be relocated,” she added.

In accordance with aviation marketing consultant Philip Butterworth-Hayes, the disruption could last more, even “an excellent seven or eight days” for enterprise as traditional to renew.

Is Heathrow resilient?

UK Power Secretary Ed Miliband promised that the federal government would do all it could to rapidly restore energy to Heathrow, as questions have been raised in regards to the airport’s “resilience.”

“There’s clearly been a catastrophic hearth at this substation, an unprecedented occasion… it seems to have knocked out a backup generator in addition to the substation itself,” Miliband advised BBC radio.

“Clearly we should look more durable on the causes and in addition the safety and the resilience that’s in place for main establishments like Heathrow.”

Butterworth-Hayes advised AFP that “there ought to have been different mills that kicked in, so why they have not is without doubt one of the large questions.”

How a lot will it cost?

A number of specialists estimated that the cost of the incident for the airways and the airport, which handles some 230,000 passengers a day, would whole tens of thousands and thousands of kilos.

Butterworth-Hayes estimated that the prices could stretch to “actually greater than 50 million kilos ($65 million).”

“It is a huge influence in misplaced revenues and disruption prices, primarily for the airways (due to) all of the follow-on prices concerned in placing individuals in lodges, refunds, re-bookings and many others,” stated impartial airline analyst John Strickland.

Shares in British Airways mother or father IAG have been down 1.6% in London afternoon buying and selling, whereas Air France-KLM additionally retreated in Paris.

UK’s second busiest airport, Gatwick, stated it will settle for some flights from Heathrow. Others have been diverted to European airports together with Shannon in southwestern Eire, Frankfurt, and Paris Charles de Gaulle.

How uncommon are closures?

Main airport closures usually are not unusual worldwide, however happen primarily owing to climate occasions, reminiscent of storms or hurricanes, or following accidents or conflicts.

Initially of October, a number of worldwide airports in Florida ceased operations due to Hurricane Milton.

South Korea’s Muan Worldwide Airport, which is far smaller than Heathrow, was closed for greater than 20 days between December and January following the lethal crash of Jeju Air Boeing 737-800.

In April 2010, the massive quantity of ash blasted into the environment by Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano led a number of European international locations — together with Britain, Norway and Denmark — to shut their airspace.

Following the 2001 September 11 assaults in New York, United States closed its airspace to civilian site visitors for two days.

© 2025 AFP