London’s Heathrow Airport has resumed full operations following a fire at an off-site electricity substation that caused major disruptions on Friday, affecting thousands of passengers.
A spokesperson for the airport confirmed on Saturday that flights had returned to normal, though residual delays and cancellations were expected as operations stabilized.
“We can confirm that Heathrow is open and fully operational today,” the spokesperson said.
“Teams across the airport continue to do everything they can to support passengers impacted by yesterday’s outage.”
The fire, which broke out Thursday night, forced Heathrow to shut down for most of Friday, grounding flights and leaving thousands of travelers stranded. Flight tracking service Flightradar24 reported that approximately 1,350 flights were affected.
As services resumed, the airport deployed hundreds of additional staff to assist passengers and introduced extra flights to accommodate an estimated 10,000 travelers who had been unable to fly on Friday.
“Passengers traveling today should check with their airline for the latest information regarding their flight,” the spokesperson advised.
British Airways, the largest carrier at Heathrow, announced that it expected to operate around 85% of its scheduled flights on Saturday.
To help clear the backlog, the UK’s transport department temporarily lifted restrictions on overnight flights.
With Heathrow handling an estimated 230,000 passengers daily—over 83 million annually—the disruption has raised concerns about the vulnerability of the UK’s key travel infrastructure.
Authorities have ruled out foul play, with London’s Metropolitan Police stating that while the Counter Terrorism Command initially led the investigation due to the fire’s impact, there was “currently no indication of foul play.”
Fire officials indicated that the focus of the inquiry would be on electrical distribution equipment at the affected power station.
Despite the disruption, Heathrow has assured passengers that normal operations have resumed, with efforts ongoing to prevent similar incidents in the future.
