After a power blackout, one of the world’s busiest airports, London Heathrow, has been fully shut down. The malfunction, which began very early in the morning, operations, including check-in counters, baggage handling, and security screening. The airport management has confirmed the grounding of all flights for an indefinite period, with no communication about the restoration of power.
“Heathrow is working urgently to resolve the situation,” said a spokesperson for Heathrow. “We apologize for the disruptions caused and are doing everything we can to assist those passengers affected.”
The shutdown has stranded thousands of passengers, with huge lines at customer service counters and travelers rushing to rebook their flights. Social media has been filled with their frustrations as they post photos of congested terminals and canceled flights.
Carriers have told customers to verify the status of their flights prior to coming to the airport and to contact their airlines for rebooking. “We know how frustrating this is and are closely cooperating with Heathrow to reduce the effect on our customers,” British Airways, the airport’s biggest carrier, said in a statement.
The blackout has also brought into question the infrastructure and readiness of the airport to respond to such an emergency.
Heathrow, which is home to more than 80 million passengers a year, is a significant juncture for international travel, making an outage of this nature serious. “This unfortunate incident further illustrates the importance of good infrastructure,” he said.
“Airports like Heathrow should have sufficient contingencies to deal with emergencies and mitigate the disruption.” Local authorities and utilities are working to establish the cause of the outage and restore electricity. Early indications were that an issue in the internal power grid of the airport may be the cause, although an official investigation is ongoing.
Meanwhile, Heathrow has commenced hosting temporary shelters in order to provide food, water, and charging points to affected passengers, though with no indication of when the situation may return to normal, uncertainty remains for those stuck in the airport. The occurrence incident also took place during a peak travel period in the airport’s operations, heightening the difficulty for passengers and airlines.
A large majority of travelers are asking for two things: transparency and solutions. As the airport begins to get things in place to put travel back on track, diplomats will monitor the incident to continue to make progress toward better consideration of investments for infrastructure and emergency planning. Meanwhile, passengers remain in place, waiting and hoping for a resolution of the circumstantial crisis!
