London's Heathrow Airport said today that the airport was fully operational after being closed for almost a day due to a fire at the city's electricity substation, and the Government launched an investigation into the UK's "energy resilience".
Thousands of passengers are still stranded today, and airlines have warned that it will take days as they try to bring planes in and find crews to transport additional passengers who were unable to travel yesterday.
The airport announced that flights had been added to today's schedule to transport an additional 10.000 passengers who were told to check with their airlines before arriving at the airport whether they would be traveling.
British Airways, the largest airline at Heathrow, said it expected to operate around 85 percent of its 600 scheduled flights at the airport today.
Friday's airport closure has raised concerns about Britain's ability to deal with infrastructure problems, with everyone from top politicians demanding answers about how a seemingly accidental fire could shut down Europe's busiest airport.
British Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said he had asked the National Energy System Operator, which oversees the UK's gas and electricity networks, to "urgently investigate" the fire "to understand the wider lessons to be learned about energy resilience for critical national infrastructure".
The first findings are expected to be available within six weeks.
"The government is determined to do everything it can to prevent a repeat of what happened at Heathrow," Miliband said.
But Willie Walsh, head of the world's commercial aviation body IATA, said the episode "raises some serious questions".
"How is it that critical infrastructure of national and global importance is completely dependent on a single energy source with no alternative? If that is the case, as appears to be the case, then it is a clear failure in airport planning," he said.
Walsh said that "Heathrow has very little incentive to improve" because the cost of cancelling flights and introducing additional and resolving passenger problems is borne by the airlines, not the airport.
More than 1.300 flights were cancelled on Friday and around 200.000 people were stranded after an overnight fire at a substation 3,2 miles (60.000 km) from the airport cut power to Heathrow and more than 18 homes. The fire was brought under control after seven hours, but the airport was closed for almost XNUMX hours.
About 120 planes were in the air when the airport closure was announced on Friday and landed elsewhere, some in other countries, some returning from halfway across the ocean from America.
Police said they were not treating the fire as suspicious and the London Fire Brigade's investigation could focus on the condition of the substation equipment that burned down.
Heathrow CEO Thomas Waldby said the airport's emergency power supply was working properly, but there was not enough power to run the entire airport, which consumes the same amount of electricity as a small city.
Heathrow is one of the world's busiest airports for international travel, handling 83,9 million passengers last year.
Yesterday's disruption was the biggest for Heathrow since 2010, when a volcanic eruption in Iceland closed European airspace to air traffic for days.
Bonus video:
