Heathrow Airport closes on Friday after the fire causing the current break

Heathrow Airport closed on Friday after a fire in a nearby electric substation caused a power outage, airport officials said.

“Heathrow is experiencing a significant interruption of power supply through the airport due to a large fire in a nearby electric substation. While fire crews respond to the incident, we have no clarity when the power can be reliably restored,” Heathrow spokesman said.

“We expect significant disturbances in the coming days and passengers should not travel to the airport under any circumstances until the airport is opened again,” the spokesman said.

The airport will remain closed at least until 11:59 pm local time on Friday.

“We know that this will be disappointing to the passengers and we want to assure that we are working as much as possible to resolve the situation,” the spokesman said.

The closure of the busiest airport in Europe has broken more than 100 flights that have been in the air and forced to deviate or return to their originally airports, according to the Flightradar24 flight tracking site.

About 145,000 passengers can be affected by the closure, according to the Cirium aviation company.

Heathrow Airport has approximately 1300 take -offs and landings at the airport a day, according to its website. Heathrow handled a recording 83.9 million passengers Last year – an almost 6% increase from 2023

Airport officials said they would update passengers “when more information is available on the resumption of operations.” Travelers can check Heathrow Airport Website or social media platforms including XS

– CNBC Leslie Josephs contributed to this report.