Thousands of travellers will be facing cancelled flights or at best delays after a ferocious blaze has devasted Heathrow Airport. Heathrow Airport, one of the world’s biggest airports, will be closed today – March 21st, 2025. All terminals, collectively serving around 300,000 people daily, will remain closed until midnight.
The sudden closure is the result of a significant power outage caused by a fire at a nearby electrical substation about a mile and a half away. Heathrow Airport is powered by this substation. An estimated 1300 flights will be affected.
There is no clarity yet as to when the airport will have its systems up and running again.
UK Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander has just commented on the Heathrow closure, urging passengers not to travel to the airport. She said:
I’m receiving updates on the fast-moving situation at Heathrow Airport.
I’m grateful to emergency services responding to the fire, and National Grid for working to restore power to the airport and homes.
I’d urge passengers not to travel to the airport, and contact their airline.
A Heathrow spokesperson urged people not to head to the airport.
“To maintain the safety of our passengers and colleagues, we have no choice but to close Heathrow until 23h59 on 21 March 2025. We expect significant disruption over the coming days and passengers should not travel to the airport under any circumstances until the airport reopens.”
Other London airports are running as normal although no arrivals will be permitted into Heathrow. Flights all around the world will have to be diverted to another UK airport.
All trains to the airport have been cancelled.
Ryanair have announced that they are providing eight rescue flights between Dublin and London Stansted, 4 on Friday and 4 on Saturday to rescue passengers affected by today’s Heathrow closure.These flights can be booked on Ryanair.com from 09:30AM this morning.
At the time of the announcement there were some 120 flights in the air. Many flights are being diverted to Gatwick Airport in London, some in Manchester, Charles de Gaulle in Paris and Shannon Airport in Ireland.
All flights to Heathrow from Manchester Airport have been cancelled.
Contact your airline for more information.
Need to know
- Send an email or call your airline immediately so that you are in the system. It will be tricky as 300,000 others will be doing the same. It may be difficult to find an alternative.
- The airline should offer you an overnight hotel room. You may be asked to organise this yourself and claim the money back.
- You can insist upon replacement transport: the airline must get you to your destination as soon as possible if that is what you want.The UK Civil Aviation Authority says “if a flight is available on the original day of travel, the passenger must be booked on it – even if it is on a rival carrier.”
- You can accept a full refund for your flight and the airline’s duty of care ends there. This means you will have find another flight yourself.
- As this event is classified as an “extraordinary circumstances” travellers are not eligible for compensation.
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