Heathrow shutdown causes travel chaos across the globe

Daily Mail, UK -The Heathrow shutdown has sparked travel chaos across the globe, with tens of thousands of passengers left stranded at airports overseas and dozens of planes from the US, the Caribbean and India turned around in mid-air. As one of the world's busiest airports handling around 1,300 landings and take-offs each day, disruption caused by its closure after a fire at a nearby electricity substation has quickly spread to other countries. 

When London Heathrow shut at around 3am, 120 flights were already on their way there, according to Flightradar24. Out of these, 36 were still in the air four hours later as pilots - mainly flying from Asia - scrambled to work out where they could land. 

Passengers from as far away as San Francisco, and Perth in Australia were caught in the carnage, with data firm Cirium estimating that 290,000 people who were scheduled to fly to or from the airport will be affected.

CNN-  Global travel was disrupted today when a “significant power outage" at an electrical substation prompted the complete shutdown of Heathrow Airport in London. The outage occurred when a transformer at a nearby substation caught fire overnight. The shutdown at one of the world's busiest travel hubs could affect more than 1,300 flights. “We expect significant disruption over the coming days and passengers should not travel to the airport under any circumstances until the airport reopens,” the airport stated. The cause of the substation blaze is under investigation.