London’s Heathrow airport has been forced to close until midnight after a nearby fire, disrupting scheduled flights and bringing turmoil to global travel. The UK capital’s main airport, one of the world’s busiest international flight hubs, said it would shut down operations throughout Friday after a blaze at an electricity substation supplying the airport caused a “significant power outage”. “To maintain the safety of our passengers and colleagues, Heathrow will be closed until 23h59 on 21 March. Passengers are advised not to travel to the airport and should contact their airline for further information,” Heathrow airport wrote in a post on X. Nearly 100 flights have been cancelled and about 120 due to arrive at Heathrow were being diverted to nearby airports including London’s Gatwick and Stansted, Birmingham, Paris’s Charles de Gaulle, Helsinki and Shannon in Ireland, according to flight tracking website Flightradar24. The closure will affect at least 1,351 flights, it added. Arrivals were “regulated at Zero due to power outage in the airport”, according to an announcement on the operations portal of Eurocontrol, which manages air traffic operations and control across Europe. Heathrow is the world’s second-busiest international airport behind Dubai, according to travel data group OAG. The London Fire Brigade said in a statement early on Friday that 10 fire engines and about 70 firefighters had been dispatched to tackle a large fire at an electrical substation in Hayes, near Heathrow, where a transformer caught alight. The statement did not mention the airport, but it said the fire had “caused a power outage affecting a large number of homes and local businesses”, and crews from Hayes, Heathrow, Hillingdon, Southall and other nearby fire stations were mobilised. It added that the cause of the fire was not known. “This is a highly visible and significant incident, and our firefighters are working tirelessly in challenging conditions to bring the fire under control as swiftly as possible,” said assistant commissioner Pat Goulbourne. “This will be a prolonged incident, with crews remaining on scene throughout the night. As we head into the morning, disruption is expected to increase, and we urge people to avoid the area wherever possible.”<br/>
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Gatwick airport has said it expects passenger numbers this year to remain below their pre-pandemic peak as a shift towards longer tourist flights means airlines are using the UK’s second-busiest airport less intensively. The London airport on Thursday said it expected to handle 44.3mn passengers this year, up from 43.2mn in 2024. The figure is below the 46.6mn who used the airport in 2019, the last full year before the pandemic swept through the aviation industry. Stewart Wingate, Gatwick’s CE insisted that flying demand was strong and that all the take-off and landing slots at the busiest times at the airport were taken. However, Gatwick was quieter than before the pandemic during some parts of the day, Wingate added. He attributed the change to a shift by airlines towards flying longer routes, which meant they could cram fewer flights into each day. “What we are finding on our European network is that the airlines tend to fly longer sector lengths than before the pandemic . . . such as to Greece or north Africa,” Wingate said. “As a result, particularly in the middle of the day, there is less intensive use of the runway.” Some other big UK airports have already recorded higher passenger numbers than their pre-pandemic peaks. London’s Heathrow airport reported record passenger numbers in 2024, as did London Stansted and Manchester airports. However, Gatwick said it had experienced “significant growth” in long-haul services in 2024, including services to China, Africa, India and the Middle East. Wingate said he was also in talks with Virgin Atlantic about a possible return to Gatwick, after the long-haul only airline moved all its operations to Heathrow airport during the pandemic. Gatwick reported a 9% year-on-year rise in profit after tax to GBP342.9m in 2024, after revenue rose 11% to GBP1.1b. The airport has outlined plans to expand passenger capacity by bringing its standby runway into regular use.<br/>
Morocco plans to invest 15b dirhams ($1.55b) to build a new terminal at its largest airport, Casablanca, to triple passenger numbers by the time Morocco co-hosts the 2030 soccer World Cup, its airports authority said on Thursday. The new terminal will serve as an African hub and will be connected to a high-speed train network that will link Kenitra to Marrakech, airports authority ONDA said in a statement. The train network is a separate project that has already been announced. Casablanca airport's expansion is part of a push to double Morocco's overall airport capacity to 78m to meet increasing traffic in the run-up to the World Cup, which Morocco will co-host with Spain and Portugal. Casablanca airport will be able to handle 35m passengers by 2029, up from 10.5m currently, ONDA said. Morocco reported a record 17.4m visitors last year, up 20% on the previous year, and it expects to attract 26m tourists in 2030. Moroccan airline RAM also plan to quadruple its fleet to 200 by 2037.<br/>
The Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki volcano in south-central Indonesia erupted three times into Friday, sending an ash column 8,000 meters (26,200 feet) high and prompting authorities to expand the danger zone around the volcano. Information on evacuations was not immediately available. The volcano on the remote island of Flores in East Nusa Tenggara province has had hundreds of earthquakes and visible volcanic activity has significantly increased in the last seven days. Authorities raised the eruption alert to the highest level and expanded the danger zone from 7 kilometers to 8 kilometers from the crater. Several airlines canceled flights between Australia and Indonesia’s tourist island of Bali due to the eruption, while other international and domestic flights to the island have been delayed. The 1,584-meter (5,197 foot) mountain is a twin volcano with Mount Lewotobi Perempuan in the Flores Timur district.<br/>
The family of a prominent Boeing whistle-blower who killed himself last year has filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the airplane manufacturer. The suit, which was filed on Wednesday in federal court in South Carolina, says Boeing contributed to the “unbearable depression, panic attacks and anxiety” the whistle-blower, John Barnett, suffered for many years. “Boeing may not have pulled the trigger, but Boeing’s conduct was the clear cause” of Barnett’s death, the lawsuit said. His family requested a jury trial. Barnett worked for Boeing for more than three decades, about half of that time as a quality manager. In 2017, he retired early from a job at the company’s factory in North Charleston, S.C., which produces the 787 Dreamliner, after he said the company had retaliated against him for speaking out about concerns over quality and safety. Barnett’s concerns at Boeing were featured prominently in The New York Times and other news outlets, as examples of problems with the company’s manufacturing. He later sued the company and was in Charleston for a deposition in that case last March when he was found dead in his truck in the parking lot of his hotel. A county coroner ruled that he had shot himself. He was 62. In a statement, Boeing said, “We are saddened by John Barnett’s death and extend our condolences to his family.” The company previously disputed his quality and retaliation claims. Boeing endured two major safety crises in the past decade. The first followed two fatal crashes of its 737 Max plane in Indonesia and Ethiopia in 2018 and 2019, in which 346 people died. Those crashes, which were later blamed on flight control software, led regulators around the world to ground the plane for nearly two years. Then, early last year, a panel blew off a 737 Max during a flight. While that incident resulted in no serious injuries, it renewed concerns about the quality of the company’s planes and forced Boeing to make major changes, including replacing its CE.<br/>