The chief executive of London’s Heathrow Airport expects it to be running as normal by Saturday after a “significant power outage” brought one of the world’s busiest transit hubs to a complete standstill, setting off waves of global travel chaos.
“Tomorrow morning, we expect to be back in full operation, so 100% operation as a normal day,” Heathrow Airport CEO Thomas Woldbye said on Friday.
Woldbye described the airport’s closure as “an incident of major severity” as he apologized to passengers for the disruption.
After hours of delay, several flights took off from the airport on Friday night, including British Airways flights to Cape Town and Riyadh, according to tracking website FlightRadar24, adding flights from six continents were inbound to Heathrow in the early hours of Saturday morning.
The first departing flights from Heathrow on Saturday are scheduled to start 6 a.m. local time (2 a.m. ET), according to the airport’s website. Almost all were listed as on time.
British Airways said that it had been given clearance by the airport to depart eight long-haul flights from 7 p.m. local time.
The UK flag carrier expects to operate at around 85% capacity on Saturday, but cautioned that “to recover an operation of our size after such a significant incident is extremely complex.” It warned customers to expect delays.
“This incident will have a substantial impact on our airline and customers for many days to come, with disruption to journeys expected over the coming days,” said chairman and CEO Sean Doyle, adding the airline faces deployment issues with crew being flown to different airports.
