Some flights resumed on Friday evening, but for most of most days, tens of thousands of people were searching for rare hotel rooms and exchange seats as the airline closed its fifth busiest airport in the world.
The industry faces the potential battle for who should pay, with the cost of a financial hit of tens of millions of pounds, and has questioned how such critical infrastructure will fail without backup.
“It’s a clear failure of the airport’s plan,” said Willie Walsh, former head of British Airways and head of physical IATA at Global Aviation, a fierce critic of the busy hub.
The airport is scheduled to process flights 1,351 on Friday, with 291,000 passengers flying, but the plane was converted to other airports in the UK and Europe, but many long-distance flights have returned to their departure points.
Heathrow CEO Thomas Waldy said he was hoping the airport would return to “full operation” on Saturday. When asked who would pay for the confusion, he added that he “has no debt in such a case,” and that “the procedures are in place.” The restrictions on night flights have been temporarily lifted by the UK Department of Transport to facilitate crowding, but British Airways CEO Shawn Doyle said the closure would “have a major impact on all of our customers flying with us in the coming days.”
Virgin Atlantic was expected to operate a “nearly full schedule” with limited cancellations on Saturday, but the situation has been dynamic and all flights have been subject to ongoing reviews.
Airlines, including Jetblue, American Airlines, Air Canada, Air India, Delta Air Lines, Qantas, United Airlines, British Airways and Virgin, were converted or returned to Origin Airport after the closure.
Stocks of many airlines fell on Friday.
Aviation experts said that it was the 2010 Icelandic volcanic ash cloud that experienced such a massive disruption, with about 100,000 flights grounded.
They warned that some passengers forced to land in Europe might need to stay in the transport lounge if they don’t have the documents to leave the airport.
Prices have jumped at hotels around Heathrow, with booking sites offering rooms worth £500 ($645) and about five times the regular price level.
Police said after the initial assessment they did not treat the incident at the power generation engine as suspicious, but the investigation is still ongoing. The London Fire Service said the investigation will focus on electrical distribution equipment.
Heathrow and other major London airports have been hit with other outages in recent years in 2023 (reported by the London Bureau, written by Conor Humphreys, edited by David Gregorio).
