A British tourist has been left stranded in China after his flight to Heathrow was cancelled.
More than 200,000 passengers have had their flights to or from Heathrow cancelled because the airport is closed on Friday following a fire at a nearby electrical substation.
Thousands of homes were left without power and more than 100 people were evacuated after a transformer within the North Hyde electrical substation caught fire in west London. The airport, which is supplied by the substation, said it was among those impacted by the power outage and while power has been restored, thousands of journeys remain in chaos.
YouTuber Luke Johnson was flying back from a three-week trip to Japan with nine friends when his connecting flight from Beijing to London – which cost around £600 – was cancelled.
“The fire began during our flight to China,” Luke, from Wiltshire, told Express.co.uk. “When we landed we noticed signs for a power outage in London, and after conversing with the staff at Beijing they told us we could get another flight at 6am the following morning.”
However, Luke and friends were devastated when that flight was also cancelled, leaving them stranded and with no idea when they will be able to get back to the UK. The 32-year-old says he is “shocked” that something like this could happen to such a major transport hub.
The airline has put the group up in a hotel for now, but Luke says the situation is less than ideal.
“We’re supposed to show up for our cancelled flight tomorrow,” he added. “We’ll need to renew the VISA we have and rebook our flight I’m assuming.
“I’m not really sure how it will continue, but it’s been OK. The hotel has not had the best standards though, there’s been mould, and the smell of cigarette smoke has overtaken the entire building. It doesn’t necessarily feel like a safe area either.”
The group has been told to head back to the airport in four hours to find out if they will be able to board a flight.
He said: “The whole experience has been tiring, going from the initial feeling of excitement that we’re going home, back to the comfort of your own space and have that rug pulled from under your feet as the news transpired has been pretty devastating. I also need to get back to work as I can only really do the YouTube thing from my computer and that’s back home.”
A spokesperson for the airport said it had no choice but to close Heathrow until 11.59pm on Friday, adding that it expects “significant” disruption over the coming days. Later on Friday, Heathrow said in a statement the airport’s back-up energy systems worked “as expected” when the substation fire started.
It said: “We have multiple sources of energy into Heathrow. But when a source is interrupted, we have back-up diesel generators and uninterruptable power supplies in place, and they all operated as expected.
“Our back-up systems are safety systems which allow us to land aircraft and evacuate passengers safely, but they are not designed to allow us to run a full operation.
“As the busiest airport in Europe, Heathrow uses as much energy as a small city, therefore it’s not possible to have back-up for all of the energy we need to run our operation safely.
“We are implementing a process which will allow us to redirect power to the affected areas, but this is a safety critical process which takes time, and maintaining safety remains our priority, so we have taken the decision to close the airport for today.”