Heathrow’s chief executive Thomas Woldbye said that he was “proud” of how the airport responded to its closure due to a fire forcing the cancellation and delays of flights
The boss of Heathrow has said he is “proud” at the way the airport responded to its closure after a fire.
Flights have begun landing at Heathrow as it aims to return to normal operation on Saturday after the airport was shut over a loss of power due to a blaze at an electricity substation in Hayes late on Thursday evening. Chief executive of Heathrow Airport, Thomas Woldbye, said he was “sincerely sorry” for the travel chaos that has been caused by the fire but added that the power substation is not part of Heathrow’s infrastructure.
He went on to say “we were handling the consequences of that failure,” and that he was “proud” of the way that the airport handled the situation, in an interview with the BBC.
According to flight tracking website FlightRadar24, British Airways (BA) flight BA56 from Johannesburg, South Africa was the first regular passenger flight to land at Heathrow since Thursday evening, touching down at 4.37am.
BA, which has a major presence at Heathrow, said it expects to operate around 85% of its scheduled flights at the airport on Saturday. The airline would usually expect to run nearly 600 departures and arrivals on Saturday but it is understood cancellations will be made, where possible, to high-frequency routes.
Of the power outage, Mr Woldbye previously told reporters a back-up transformer failed, meaning systems had to be closed down in accordance with safety procedures so that power supplies could be restructured from two remaining substations to restore enough electricity to power what is described as a “mid-sized city”.
He apologised to stranded passengers and defended the airport’s response to the situation, saying the incident is as “as big as it gets for our airport” and that “we cannot guard ourselves 100%”.
After announcing early on Friday that it would be closed until 11.59pm, Heathrow later reopened with a focus on repatriation flights for passengers diverted to other airports in Europe.
Following that announcement, several airlines said they would restart scheduled flights both to and from Heathrow, including British Airways, Air Canada and United Airlines. Around 200,000 passengers have been affected by the closure of what is Europe’s busiest airport.
A spokesperson for Heathrow said early on Saturday the airport was “open and fully operational”, adding: “Teams across the airport continue to do everything they can to support passengers impacted by yesterday’s outage at an off-airport power substation.
“We have hundreds of additional colleagues on hand in our terminals and we have added flights to today’s schedule to facilitate an extra 10,000 passengers travelling through the airport. Passengers travelling today should check with their airline for the latest information regarding their flight.”