PASSENGERS who were scheduled to travel from Irish airport destinations to London Heathrow may have their flights re-routed, following a fire and a power outage at the UK’s biggest airport.
It is understood that the disruption was caused after a fire broke out at an electrical substation near Heathrow, resulting in an almost total power outage across the five terminals of the airport. A statement from Heathrow said that it would be closed for most of the day ‘to maintain the safety of our passengers and colleagues’.
There has been widespread disruption, with at least 70 flights to and from Heathrow scheduled to take off from the island of Ireland being impacted. 34 of these flights originate at Dublin Airport, while 14 were scheduled from Belfast City Airport and eight at Shannon Airport. The chaos has also affected flights from Cork, Derry and Knock airports.
Aer Lingus and British Airways, both of which schedule regular flights into Heathrow from Ireland, are trying to re-route as many of their flights as possible to other available UK airports. Passengers on other airlines have not been so lucky, with many turning up to Irish airports to discover that their flights have been cancelled.
RTÉ News reported that many passengers were still hopeful they would get to their destinations. One woman who was scheduled to fly to New York via Heathrow for a wedding said that she was one of the lucky few who had been offered an alternative flight route.
Graeme McQueen, Media Relations Manager with the Dublin Airport Authority (DAA), said passengers should expect disruption for the next couple of days. He said that Dublin Airport was not in a position to accept diverted flights from London Heathrow.
He added: “I think if you can get onto your airline, discuss it with them, whether you can maybe move to one of the other airports in London because it seems very likely that the knock-on impact will carry on for a number of days on this.”
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the Shannon Airport Group said that flights scheduled to land at Heathrow from Toronto, Atlanta, Bridgetown Barbados, Boston, Orlando and Newark had all been affected. The airport’s CEO said that efforts were under way to re-route passengers travelling today between Heathrow and Shannon.