London’s Heathrow Airport — one of the busiest destinations in the world — was completely shut down on Friday. There were zero flights in or out, which is almost unimaginable.
A fire broke out at a nearby electrical substation, which led to power issues at Heathrow and a complete closure of the airport. Some 1,300 flights were affected, NBC News reported.
Flightradar24, a site devoted to live-tracking flights, posted a graphic showing the stunning difference in flight volume from one day to the next. It’s shocking to see no flights to Heathrow whatsoever.
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The downstream effects of Heathrow’s closure are likely to felt for some time. Its total closure is a massive wrench thrown into the global transportation system.
Airport officials said its back-up power source worked as intended but it wasn’t able to power the entire airport. It’s unclear when things would get back to normal at Heathrow — but it may not be anytime soon.
“We expect significant disruption over the coming days, and passengers should not travel to the airport under any circumstances until the airport reopens,” the airport noted, according to the Associated Press. Heathrow’s X account posted at about 4:15 p.m. local time that it hoped to “run a full operation tomorrow.”
Hopefully that means far more flights on the graphic tomorrow.