London’s Heathrow Airport resumes flights after shutdown

London’s Heathrow Airport fully resumed operations on Saturday after a massive fire at an electrical substation shut it down on Friday, causing global travel chaos.

Heathrow is one of the busiest airports in the world and a vital hub. Several flights were cancelled or rerouted.

Some operations restarted Friday evening local time, but thousands of passengers and the travel industry struggled to fix battered airline schedules. Travelers stranded near London said they paid up to 5 times the standard rates for lodging.

The airport was scheduled to handle 1,351 flights yesterday, flying up to 291,000 passengers. More than 100 flights were on the way to Heathrow when the fire broke out, and they all had to be turned around or rerouted to other airports.

British Airways was the most impacted, with more than 650 flight cancellations.

Aviation experts compared the disruption to the 2010 Icelandic volcanic ash cloud, warning some stranded passengers could face prolonged waits.