A fire causes power outage at Heathrow, spurs flight chaos
Marketplace All-in-One
Marketplace
4.5 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 21 March 2025
⏱️ 7 minutes
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Summary
From the BBC World Service: London’s Heathrow Airport will be closed Friday following a power outage; more than 1,300 flights face cancellation. The outage was caused by a fire at a nearby electrical substation that supplies the airport’s power. The disruption could last for days. Then, some scam texts are sent by people held against their will at scam centers in Myanmar and East Asia. A woman freed from one recounts her story.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | A fire closes Europe's busiest airport for the day and causes flight chaos around the world. |
| 0:06.4 | Live from the BBC World Service, this is the Marketplace Morning Report. |
| 0:10.2 | Will Bain in for Leanna Burn again today. Thanks for being with us. |
| 0:14.4 | Yes, London's Heathrow Airport will be closed all day on Friday following a power outage. |
| 0:18.8 | It was caused by a huge fire at a nearby electrical substation |
| 0:22.5 | that supplies the airport's power. The BBC's Charlotte Gallagher has more. |
| 0:27.1 | I'm just near Terminal 2 at Heathrow Airport and it's totally deserted. There's no cars being |
| 0:32.2 | allowed near the airport. They're being stopped by police and you'd expect it to be incredibly |
| 0:36.2 | busy at this time in the morning. |
| 0:37.9 | There's some cars going past now, but apart from that, it's pretty deserted. |
| 0:41.6 | The fire, we think, is still ongoing in one part of the substation. |
| 0:45.4 | So that's still a situation that the fire brigade are working on at the moment. |
| 0:48.9 | And some people have had to be evacuated from their homes because it was just too dangerous. |
| 0:53.3 | Essentially, there's not |
| 0:54.3 | an aircraft arriving at the airport. They've all been completely cancelled today. Any ones that |
| 0:59.4 | were due to depart as well, they've been cancelled. So 200,000 passengers, 300 flights affected. Some |
| 1:07.6 | flights were in the air when the airport closed. Around 120 flights were mid-air. |
| 1:11.9 | Some had to be turned back to their original destination. Others have been diverted. And this |
| 1:17.0 | disruption is not going to be over when the airport reopens hopefully at midnight tonight, |
| 1:21.2 | because of course aircraft and crews are not where they're supposed to be. |
| 1:25.0 | Well, one of those passengers are referenced by Charlotte Charlotte Gallagher there, was Lawrence Hayes, |
| 1:29.0 | who was on an overnight flight from New York when he learned his flight wouldn't be landing at Heathrow. |
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