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The first flights of the day have taken off from Heathrow Airport, just over 24 hours after a fire at an electrical substation shut down operations at the UK’s busiest airport.
A TAP Portugal flight to Lisbon took off at around 06:00 GMT, just after Heathrow said the airport was “open and fully operational”.
But flight delays are expected to linger and passengers are advised to check with their airlines. Nine of the first 20 flights expected to land on Saturday were cancelled, however most departing flights were on schedule.
Eight long haul flights took off on Friday evening.
Airlines are scrambling to meet the logistical challenge created by the closure, with carefully laid plans for the movement of planes and crews thrown into chaos.
A key priority will be helping passengers stranded at airports around the world after their flights were diverted.
Nearly 1,400 flights were disrupted by the closure on Friday, according to air traffic website flightradar24.com
Around 120 flights were diverted elsewhere, with the most common destinations being Amsterdam and Gatwick.
British Airways said 85% of its planned flights on Saturday would run, meaning 60 services to and from Heathrow would be cancelled.
Turkish Airlines and Virgin Atlantic have also cancelled flights.
“Teams across the airport continue to do everything they can to support passengers impacted by yesterday’s outage at an off-airport power substation,” Heathrow Airport said in a statement.
“We have hundreds of additional colleagues on hand in our terminals and we have added flights to today’s schedule to facilitate an extra 10,000 passengers travelling through the airport.”
The airport was closed on Friday after a fire broke out at an electrical substation in west London, which supplies Heathrow, causing a major power outage.
While counter-terrorism police are involved in the investigation, London Fire Brigade have determined the fire was “non-suspicious”.
Heathrow is the UK’s largest aviation hub. A record 83.9 million passengers passed through its terminals last year, according to its latest data.
Questions have been raised over whether it has back-up systems in the event of power cuts.
The understands that Heathrow does have back-up power for its key systems, but kickstarting these alternative power supplies for the whole airport takes time.
The systems, however, are not enough to run the whole airport – hence the decision to close it down.
Chairman of the National Preparedness Commission and Labour peer, Lord Toby Harris, said the closure was an “enormous failure”.
“It sounds to me like Heathrow Airport was simply not as prepared as it should have been,” he told Radio 4’s Today programme.
He added that there should have been better continency plans for emergency power.
Owner of logistics and supply chain company PS Forwarding, Jason Bona, told the Today programme the incident made Heathrow a “laughing stock” in the global freight community.
