By Catarina Demony
LONDON (Reuters) – Thousands of travellers stranded by a huge fire near London’s Heathrow, Europe’s busiest airport, scrambled to find ways to get home and reunite with their families on Friday as they faced what could be days of disruptions.
Heathrow was shut as around 70 firefighters sought to put down the blaze at a nearby electrical substation in the west of London that knocked out power at the airport as well as the area’s back-up power system.
Airlines advised passengers not to travel to the airport, and Britain’s energy minister Ed Miliband warned it would take time to recover from the “catastrophic” fire.
Waiting at central London’s Paddington station, which normally offers express train service to Heathrow, U.S. traveller Tyler Prieb contacted airlines Friday morning, hoping to find a new flight back to his home in Nashville, Tennessee.
“I’m sure everybody is going to need a new flight somewhere, somehow. So I’m just trying to get ahead of that the best I can,” said Prieb, 36, who was in London for work and to see friends.
“Hopefully, it will just take me an extra day to get back to my wife and my daughter. And they are probably wishing I would be home already,” he said.
In the meantime, Prieb said he had asked OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT for ways to pass the time.
“I thought maybe I’d go explore another city somewhere,” he said.
Heathrow was due to handle 1,351 flights during the day, flying up to 291,000 passengers.
A Heathrow spokesperson told Reuters in an email that there was no clarity on when power would be restored, and they expected significant disruption over the coming days.
John Moriarty, another U.S. traveller, listened attentively to his phone’s speaker, hoping to get through to his airline’s customer service helpline.
The 75-year-old said he was anxious to return to Boston to see his daughter, who had travelled from New York to visit him.
“All the lines are busy, so I might be here another day. Not the worst thing in the world. (London) is my favourite city, but I need to be home,” 75-year-old John Moriarty said.
Travel experts said the disruption would extend far beyond Heathrow, and global flight schedules will be affected more broadly, as many aircraft will now be out of position.
Mahmoud Ali, 40, an employee of Domino’s Pizza in London, had been due to fly to his native Pakistan to be with his wife and children, who he has not seen since last summer.
“They are waiting for me. I’m trying to call the airline and Heathrow (to find out) what time the situation will be resolved,” he said.
The fire has also forced the rerouting of incoming flights, leaving passengers unsure of where they will land.
Some flights from the United States were turning around mid-air and returning to their point of departure.
Adrian Spender, who works at British retailer Tesco, said in a post on X that he was on an Airbus A380 that had been headed for Heathrow.
“#Heathrow no idea where we are going yet. Currently over Austria,” he wrote.
(Reporting by Catarina Demony; Writing by Alvise Armellini; Editing by Joe Bavier)
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