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A fire at an electrical substation knocked out power to Heathrow Airport for most of Friday, forcing Europe's busiest hub to shut down for roughly 18 hours, causing widespread cancellations and rerouting headaches, and stranding roughly 2,00,000 passengers. The blaze started just before midnight on Thursday at a substation about 3.2 km from the airport and took firefighters around seven hours to bring under control. Authorities said they found no evidence that it was suspicious, and the London Fire Brigade said its investigation would focus on the electrical distribution equipment at the substation. The fire knocked out power to Heathrow and thousands of homes in the area. It affected at least 1,350 flights to and from the airport, according to flight tracking service FlightRadar 24, and the impact was expected to last several days, as passengers try to reschedule their trips and airlines work to reposition their planes and crews. After power was restored, a British Airways jet ...
A Virgin Atlantic jet collided with another plane while it was being towed at Heathrow Airport on Saturday, aviation authorities said. There were no reports of injuries. Virgin said its Boeing 787-9 had completed a flight and had no passengers aboard when its wingtip clipped a stationary British Airways jet while being towed from a stand at the airport's Terminal 3. Images posted on social media showed several fire trucks surrounding the two planes, whose wings were touching. We've commenced a full and thorough investigation and our engineering teams are performing maintenance checks on the aircraft, which for now has been taken out of service, Virgin said in a statement. BA said engineers were also looking at its plane. Heathrow said that no passenger injuries have been reported and we do not anticipate there to be any ongoing impact to airport operations.
Mixed signals are emerging about travel in Europe heading into the winter season. British Airways is cutting more than 10,000 short-haul flights in and out of London's Heathrow Airport through March, while nearby Gatwick Airport is ending its limits on the number of daily flights. Major European airports have been chaotic this summer as people eager to travel after two years of COVID-19 restrictions ran up against staffing shortages, leading to long lines, baggage delays and flight cancellations. Airports like Heathrow, Amsterdam's Schiphol and Gatwick capped how many passengers could fly each day or the number of flights to ease the travel mayhem over the past few months. Gatwick said Monday that it wasn't renewing its daily flight limits, while Heathrow, Britain's largest airport, decided last week to extend its daily cap of 100,000 passengers through the end of October. Heathrow's extension led British Airways to cancel 629 round-trip short-haul flights over the next two ...