London’s Heathrow Airport has restarted full flight operations after a major electrical substation fire within a nearby electrical substation caused a 24-hour blackout, effectively stranding more than 1,300 flights and keeping over 200,000 passengers stranded across the world.
The fire, that started Thursday night in the North Hyde substation, needed 70 firefighters and 10 fire engines to put out. While being brought under control by Friday afternoon, the fire caused massive disruptions, prompting airlines to cancel and redirect flights.
BA announced the suspension of eight key long-haul departures including flights to Singapore, Johannesburg and Rio de Janeiro as the airport works to reconnect stranded passengers. 
Travellers spoke of spooky scenes on board the darkened airport. “We took our luggage downstairs in phone light scenes, said Taylor Collier-Brown, whose HG hockey team was stuck in Geneva.
The police, including London Metropolitan Police counterterrorism command have confirmed that the fire is not being treated as suspicious. Industry insiders believe the fire probably started from a catastrophic failure within the substation’s transformer system, catching fire 25,000 litres of oil that was cooling the transformers.
Although Heathrow held an emergency electrical backup, the size of the outage meant normal operations were not feasible. National Air Traffic Services (NATS) rolled out a large diversion plan to handle backlogs, other UK airports were not disrupted.
Travelers should contact their airlines as the airport gradually returns to normal after one for the greatest disruptions in its past.
