Hijacked and canceled flights, nearly three hundred thousand passengers left stranded: the monstrous numbers from the Heathrow KO

He is having colossal consequences the closure, for the entire day of March 21, of London's Heathrow Airport. The stopover, Europe's busiest and the fifth busiest in the world in 2024 with 83.6 million passengers, was paralyzed following a fire that broke out on the evening of March 20 at the Hayes power plant, a few kilometers away, which knocked out power to terminals, parking lots, aircraft aprons and runways.

Actually, It was 'lucky' that the fire broke out in the late evening of the 20th (assuming the investigation, also conducted by British counterterrorism, rules out an act of sabotage). Because at that time the planes already flying to Heathrow was 'just'120. And things would have been far more complicated if the fire had broken out at a peak time later in the day, when hundreds of planes would be flying into the major British and European airport.

Of course, hijacking 120 planes, all or most of which were wide-bodied and certainly could not be landed anywhere, was far from simple. And, in fact, apart from a small number of flights that had just taken off and returned to the airport of departure, the other were landed where there was room or where the companies involved had staff to assist passengers and the planes themselves-London Gatwick and Stansted, Shannon in Ireland, as well as Amsterdam and Frankfurt.

 

The hardest hit airline was obviously British Airways, which had to divert 43 flights elsewhere, followed by Virgin Atlantic with 14, American Airlines with 10, United Airlines and Air Canada with 6, Delta Airlines with 4, Cathay Pacific and Singapore Airlines with 3, Air India, Japan Airlines, Jetblue, Qantas and Qatar Airways with 2, and eleven other airlines that saw one of their planes land elsewhere.

Hijacked flights aside, The airport 'blockade' affected 1,351 flights that were scheduled to depart or arrive yesterday, impacting the travel plans of More than 290,000 passengers in the UK and worldwide.

Only British Airways had to cancel 660 movements, including those to and from Italy: a total of 54 between departures and arrivals as follows: 14 to and from Rome, 12 to and from Milan Linate, 8 to and from Milan Malpensa, 10 to and from Venice, 6 to and from Bologna, two to and from Naples, and two to and from Florence. No flights were scheduled on Pisa and Palermo yesterday.

ITA Airways passengers were not affected, because the Italian carrier has been flying to London City and Gatwick only for several months now. Similarly, has gone smoothly for low-cost passengers connecting our country with the British capital, as Ryanair, easyJet and Wizz Air fly to Gatwick, Stansted and Luton airports. Ryanair, in particular, organized some 'rescue flights' available to passengers affected by the Heathrow blackout.

By the late afternoon of March 21 there were cautious hopes that the airport could resume, partially, its operations as early as the evening and certainly as of March 22. However, the 'tail end' of disruptions resulting from today's closure will be felt (in terms of flight operations and on-time operations) certainly throughout the weekend and much of next week.

• blackout
• heathrow
• fire