Air travelers face further violations when Hitrov opens up after the fire

Air travelers face the days of disruption when Hitrov is fighting for recovery after the fire that closed the most lively Europe airport, which led to 1300 flights cancellation and raising questions about the UK infrastructure stability.

The flames at the local electricity substation caused the electricity shutdown, which closed the airport in the first hours on Friday morning and forced the entrance flights to redirect other centers such as Paris and Amsterdam, or return to their original airports.

Some Transatlantic flights were where the place was available, including the Air Canada flight from Toronto, allocated to Geese -bey, Newfoundland.

In the midst of 70 firefighters fought with hell, which began shortly before the north on Thursday and fired 25,000 liters of cooled oil.

After the engineers worked to restore the power supply throughout the day, Hitrov said that there would be several flights on Friday night before the full opening.

The flight performance resumed immediately after 7 pm, when the first BA plane landed in Hitrov.

However, it is expected that the breakdowns will last all day, when the carriers have started the logistics problem of rebooting their activities with planes, crews and passengers who are not located and scattered around the world.

“This is an unprecedented situation, and we have not seen the closure of hires of this scale for many years,” said Sean Doyle, CEO of British Airways.

Metropolitan police in London said her command of terrorism is in charge of “the location of the substation and the influence that the incident had on a critical national infrastructure.”

However, investigators who study the cause of the fire do not believe that criminal or hostile state activity has played a role, according to people familiar with this issue.

The closure after the refusal of one local substation also raised the stability of the hires, and whether other parts of the UK national infrastructure were similarly vulnerable.

Wali Walsh, a former bachelor’s head and the current head of the International Air Transport Association, criticized what, he said, was a “obvious failure of planning”, which left a critical infrastructure dependent on a single source.

Ruth Kadbury, Chairman of the Transport Committee, said the BBC that the incident “raised questions about the sustainability of the infrastructure”.

Heathrow leaders rejected these claims. They said the airport attracted electricity from three substations, as well as backup generators that offer enough emergency forces to keep the run -up strips open, although not enough to manage full airport operations over a long period.

Thomas Waldby, CEO of Hitrov, said the airport suffered a “serious degree of seriousness”. He added: “It’s unprecedented. It has never been before … We don’t close the airport unless we have serious security problems.”

While only one of the three substations that supply power, Hitrov was forced to close thousands of electrical systems. “Rest all these systems safely … It takes a lot of time,” Waldby said. “We cannot protect ourselves 100 percent (against all emergencies),” he said.

The British Airways, which operates more than half of the flights from the hire, was the worst airline, and ordered the passengers to prepare for a long breakdown.

“This incident will have a significant impact on our airline and customers on long days, with travel violations that are expected in the coming days,” Doyle said.

On Friday alone, the airline planned to manage more than 670 flights, which transported about 107,000 customers, and a similar number is planned last weekend. More than 200,000 passengers use hires every day.

The full closure sent passengers who sought to find other ways of traveling. Some airlines, including Ryanair and Easyjet, as well as the Eurostar International Train Service, have put additional places in their services, and the UK railway operators reported spikes in train reservations.

Some turned to private planes. Toby Edwards, co -chairman of the private company Jet Charter Company Victor, said the demand for flights was “grew”, including one passenger who paid $ 75,000 to fly through the Atlantic.

As the demand took off the rooms, the hotels near Hitts were charged with raising prices more than four times up to 700 pounds per night.

Shares in European airlines closed on Friday after closing the hires, including Minternational Airlines Group, parents of British Airways, which fell by almost 3 percent.

Additional report by Lucy Fisher, Kiran Smith, Akila Cunio and Jami John