Switzerland’s national airline carrier Swiss announced on Friday it had cancelled all flights from Geneva and Zurich to London’s Heathrow Airport.
Heathrow airport announced it would be forced to close all day on Friday following a huge fire at a power sub-station which shut down London’s main airport.
The cancellation on Friday concerns a total of ten SWISS flights from Geneva with 944 passengers and 14 flights from Zurich with 1,969 passengers, the Lufthansa subsidiary said in a press release on Friday morning.
“As a precautionary measure, all flights from Switzerland to and from London Heathrow have been closed to sales for Saturday 22 March,” it added.
The London airport operator, Heathrow Airport Holdings, said it expected “serious (traffic) disruption over the next few days” due to the fire.
Around 70 firefighters were deployed to tackle the “highly visible” blaze at the substation in Hayes, west London.
Videos on social media, apparently shot inside Heathrow’s terminals, showed shuttered shops and deserted corridors, lit only by emergency lighting.
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Heathrow, which handles more than 80 million passengers a year, has around 1,300 takeoffs or landings a day.
British Airways said the closure of its main hub “will clearly have a significant impact on our operation and our customers”.
“We’re working as quickly as possible to update them on their travel options for the next 24 hours and beyond,” it said.
