COUNTER-TERRORISM police are leading the investigation into the cause of a fire that led to the closure of Heathrow Airport.
The Met Police's Counter Terrorism Command said it was looking into the cause of the incident at the electric substation in west London.
The force said there was "currently no indication of foul play" but that officers are keeping an "open mind at this time".
More than 200,000 air 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.
Disruption has hit Scotland, with flights to Heathrow cancelled. Aberdeen and Glasgow airports said all flights to and from the airport have been called off for the remainder of Friday.
Thousands of homes have been 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.
Passengers are being warned to expect disruption for several days, and many planes and flight crews are in the wrong location.
Online flight tracking service Flightradar24 said the closure would affect more than 1350 flights to and from Heathrow on Friday. This includes 679 scheduled to land and 678 due to take off from the airport.
It said 120 flights to the airport were in the air when the closure was announced.
Heathrow is the UK’s largest airport, with more than 83.9 million passengers travelling through its terminals in 2024.
A Heathrow spokesperson said: “Heathrow is experiencing a significant power outage across the airport due to a large fire at a nearby electrical substation. Whilst fire crews are responding to the incident, we do not have clarity on when power may be reliably restored.
“To maintain the safety of our passengers and colleagues, we have no choice but to close Heathrow until 23h59 on 21 March 2025. We expect significant disruption over the coming days and passengers should not travel to the airport under any circumstances until the airport reopens.
“We will provide an update when more information on the resumption of operations is available. We know this will be disappointing for passengers and we want to reassure that we are working as hard as possible to resolve the situation.”
This is believed to be the worse disruption at Heathrow since December 18-23 2010, when thousands of Christmas getaway passengers camped in the terminals because of widespread cancellations caused by snow.
