Heathrow Airport is shut until Friday night

[Ozgirl76]

And my husband is due to fly home to Australia on Friday evening. I predict chaos.
Airport is saying that people should not travel to Heathrow and should contact their airlines.

We found out at 05:30 when just about to get tube to Heathrow. Now working when should be in Air heading for a holiday. Nothing anyone can do.
I also... Thought Russia may be involved.

similar arguments upthread about ability to use wifi while flying

Flights get cancelled every day. It’s literally parr for the course of running an airline.

There’s flights available on Tues/Weds that people could switch onto but the absence of any central coordination means those flights will be gone by the time they communicate.

Yes a local one to me caught fire a few weeks ago, these things are really old now & like the water industry, there is no profit in upgrading them...

Another one thinking 'Russia.' They've been behind a lot of infrastructure fires recently and have been trying to get explosive packages on planes. As for why they would do it; well, why assassinate targets in a way that could fatally poison thousands of bystanders? Why launch cyber attacks on hospitals? It's all about causing massive disruption and economic damage and about showing the west that the rules-based global order is over and they will sink to any depths.

(Now it will turn out to be some nightwatchman having a strawberry vape.)

I thought only Manchester and Heathrow were sufficiently capable of handling the A380. I could be wrong but I thought there was a reason.

How did you manage to post this mid flight lol

Total Chaos due to the full closure of heathrow! Flights diverted all over the world and many flights returned to the USA overnight.

We’ve already covered this numerous times.

Really important people fly into RAF bases, typically Northolt.

Or maybe we could use the internet to have meetings? We could call it Zoom, maybe?

How did you not manage to not only not know that many flights have WIfi but also miss the many posts in this thread informing you of this fact? lol

Haven’t got the full list but there are more than those two.

For example and just from memory Emirates have operated the 380 into Birmingham.

The limitations are mainly down to runway and also taxiway strength, plus having wingtip clearance from other traffic and obstacles when taxing around the airport.

It could be Russia but then never underestimate Heathrow’s ability to fuck up.

Remember the big IT outage from a few years ago? Wasn’t it just an unplugged computer or something?

^^ This……..

I took my dad to see it live. Fantastic. And I am not a musicals fan.

Well yes but this incident is actually caused by a fire at an electricity sub station in Hayes. Not by Heathrow itself.

A fire at an electrical substation is not Heathrow's fuck up!

It needs to be looked in to but this is another factor on the Russia question

Not sure either way

Emirates also operates a A380 into Glasgow daily.

As others who clearly know what they're talking about have said, airlines don't ever want to divert to airports where they have no ground crew and no facilities unless it is an absolute life-threatening emergency. Like 9/11 when everything just landed wherever, as quickly as possible. Turning back is undeniably inconvenient for passengers but does mean that plane loads are returning to major airports where there are hotels, cafes, airline staff in the terminal rather than being forced to land in a small regional airport with none of that.

I think it was a fire that caused a power outage in the area, nothing to do with the airport itself

Much of our infrastructure is old, eg our water/sewage system our electricity is no different. As pp said sub stations are catching fire more often. It'll be down to shareholders and money imo.

I live about 2 miles from Heathrow airport,right under the flight path. I had a power cut last night, thankfully only lasted about an hour and a half. It is eerily quiet today with no planes going over ever minute.

I was being slightly TIC..

Yep, it apparently is down to a big fire in a substation in Hayes, next to where the old Nestle’s factory used to be.

Evidently not from a rebooking perspective, given that passengers aren’t being given that option. You know flight cancellations happen daily right? Granted not on this volume, but they’re still selling flights for early next week. Flights that with the right tech behind it, could be offered to stranded passengers.
I think you underestimate the power of the technology that’s out there these days, and how archaic BA’s IT systems are (which is a known fact).

Ed Miliband is doing the rounds saying there is 'no suggestion that there is foul play', so that's alright then.