London Heathrow Airport has reopened after a fire and associated power outage kept the major European hub closed for most of Friday.
"Following an earlier power outage, Heathrow is now safely able to restart flights," read a message on the Heathrow website. "To maintain the safety of our passengers and colleagues, Heathrow will running a reduced operation prioritizing repatriation and relocation of aircraft." It added that passengers should contact their airline for further information.
Heathrow had been scheduled to receive 669 inbound flights on Friday, according to Cirium flight schedule data. The closure upended travel globally due to Heathrow's centrality as Europe's largest connecting hub.
An outsized impact on British Airways
No airline, however, has been as impacted like British Airways, which had a combined 670 arrivals and departures scheduled out of its London hub on Friday, including 41 inbound U.S. operations.
BA chief Sean Doyle cautioned customers in a Friday video message that the closure would cause flight schedule disruptions for many days to come, as aircraft that were diverted due to the outage were repositioned and displaced flight crews rescheduled.
"I am sorry to everybody who's experiencing this disruption and ask you for your understanding while we work to recover our operation from such a significant challenge, which is complex to work through," Doyle said.
U.S. airlines plan to restart at Heathrow
Other sizable carriers in the U.S.-Heathrow market expect a near normal operations on Friday night and Saturday.
American said it planned to resume Heathrow operations as soon as possible. The carrier had 20 Heathrow-bound flights scheduled for Friday. All flights that were in the air when the airport closure began returned to the U.S.
Virgin Atlantic, which had 18 U.S.-Heathrow flights disrupted on Friday, said it expects to operate a nearly full schedule of Heathrow arrivals on Saturday, though it does plan to cancel one of its five schedule departures from New York JFK.
United said it expects to fly most of its 16 scheduled flights to Heathrow on Saturday. Seven United departures on Thursday evening were forced to return to their originating airport or to divert to another location.
Delta said it expects normal departures Friday evening for its overnight Heathrow flights. The airline had four flights enroute to Heathrow when the closure took effect. One, from Minneapolis, returned to the departure city, while three others were diverted to Amsterdam.
"We worked to re-accommodate anyone who was connecting in Heathrow, and for those customers who had Heathrow as their destination, they had the train option from Amsterdam," Delta said.
Delta has also added three Amsterdam departures for Saturday.