Travelers look out on days of the disorder, while Heathrow reopens after the fire

Air travelers are standing days ago because Heathrow tries to recover from a fire that has closed the most busy airport in Europe, which leads to 1,300 flight cancellations and raises questions about the resistance of the British infrastructure.

The airport was reopened on Saturday morning for flights and the first aircraft started shortly after 6 a.m.

However, a disorder is still expected, since the airlines began the logistical challenge of restarting their operations with aircraft, crews and passengers out of place and scattering around the world.

British Airways, Heathrow’s largest airline, said it would probably be canceled about 15 percent of his flights at the airport on Saturday.

The fire in a local electricity span caused a power failure that closed the airport in the early morning hours of Friday morning and forced in incoming flights to other hubs such as Paris and Amsterdam or returned to their original airports.

Some transatlantic flights landed wherever there was space, including an Air Canada flight from Toronto to Goose Bay, Newfoundland.

At its peak, 70 firefighters dealt with the inferno, which began on Thursday shortly before midnight and lit 25,000 liters of cooling oil.

“This is an unprecedented situation, and we have not seen Heathrow’s conclusion on this size for many years,” said Sean Doyle, Managing Director of BA.

According to London’s Metropolitan Police, the command for fighting terrorism is in view of the “location of the substation and the effects that this incident had on the critical national infrastructure”.

On Friday evening, the Met added that the responsibility, although responsibility in the hands of the police force remained of fighting terrorism, did not treat the incident as suspicious.

“The examination of the cause of the fire remains in the early stages,” said the troop. “After the first evaluation, we do not treat this incident as suspicious, although the inquiries are still not completed.”

The closure after the failure of a local substation also asked questions about Heathrow’s resistance and whether other parts of the national infrastructure of the United Kingdom were similarly susceptible.

Willie Walsh, a former head of BA and current head of the International Air Transport Association, criticized what he described as “clear planning failure”, which had made critical infrastructure dependent on a single power source.

Ruth Cadbury MP, chairman of the Select Committee Transport, told the BBC that the incident “raises questions about the resistance of the infrastructure”.

Heathrow’s managers rejected these claims. They said that the airport drew three substances and backup generators of strength that offer enough emergency electricity to keep the runways open, even though they were not sufficient to operate the full operation of the airport for a longer period of time.

Thomas Woldbye, CEO von Heathrow, said that the airport had “suffered an incident with severe difficulty”. He added: “This is unprecedented. It has never happened before … We do not close the airport unless we have serious security concerns.”

While only one of the three substances that supplies electricity was missing, Heathrow had to close thousands of electrical systems. “Restart all of these systems in a safe way … takes a long time,” said Woldbye. “We cannot protect ourselves 100 percent (against every contingency),” he said.

BA, which executes more than half of the flights from Heathrow, was from the longest affected airline and asked the passengers to prepare for a long -term disorder.

“This incident will have a significant impact on our airline and our customers for many days, whereby a disorder of travel is expected in the coming days,” said Doyle.

The airline had planned to operate more than 670 flights with around 107,000 customers on Friday alone, with similar figures to be planned at the weekend. More than 200,000 passengers use Heathrow every day.

The complete closure rushed the passengers to find other ways to travel. Some airlines, including Ryanair and Easyjet and the international train service from Eurostar, use their services additional places, while British rail operators reported Spikes in train bookings.

Some turned to private jets. Toby Edwards, Co-CEO of private Jet Charter Company Victor, said that the demand for flights had “increased”, including a passenger who paid $ 75,000 for flying over the Atlantic.

When the demand for room hotels near Heathrow was accused, the prices were increased more than four times to £ 700 per night.

The shares of European Airlines closed on Friday after Heathrow was closed, including the International Airlines Group, the parents of British Airways, which declined by almost 3 percent.

Additional reporting by Lucy Fisher, Kieran Smith, Akila Quinio and Jamie John