Staff Reporter :
Heathrow Airport was forced to shut down on Friday following a massive fire at a nearby substation, which knocked out its power supply and backup systems, causing widespread disruption.
The fire, which began around 11 pm (2300 GMT) on Thursday, produced huge orange flames and black smoke, severely affecting Europe’s busiest airport and stranding passengers worldwide.
The blaze caused a power failure that impacted over 1,350 scheduled flights, including a Biman Bangladesh Airlines flight, BG-201, which was forced to return to Dhaka midway through its journey.
The flight, which had taken off from Dhaka and made a brief stop in Zurich, was diverted back to Dhaka after departing Zurich due to the power outage at Heathrow.
With 267 passengers on board, the Boeing 787-9 aircraft returned to Dhaka at 13:15 (local time), resulting in significant delays and operational difficulties.
The fire, caused by 25,000 litres of cooling oil catching fire in a transformer, left the airport without power, affecting both scheduled flights and the backup power systems.
Passengers were stranded as flights were diverted to other airports across Britain and Europe, while long-haul flights were forced to return to their points of departure.
The airport’s closure has led to widespread chaos, with airline executives and passengers questioning how such a critical infrastructure failure could occur.
Despite emergency efforts by engineers, there is no clear timeline for when power will be fully restored, and experts warned that the disruption could continue for several days. Meanwhile, Heathrow advised passengers not to travel to the airport and to contact their airlines for further information.
The airport’s operational difficulties have also caused financial losses, with airlines scrambling to reconfigure their networks and hotels around Heathrow seeing inflated prices. Shares in British Airways’ parent company, IAG, were hit, and many other airlines, including easyJet and Ryanair, have added extra flights or used larger planes to help clear the backlog.
Heathrow has faced similar outages in the past, including a recent air traffic control system failure and an automated gate malfunction. The current disruption, however, is one of the most significant in recent years, and industry experts warn of continued delays as the situation unfolds.
