Heathrow Airport closed: Will flights be delayed at Birmingham Airport due to diversions?

More than 1,300 flights to and from Heathrow Airport will be disrupted on Friday due to the closure of the airport following a fire at a nearby electrical substation.

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.

Online flight tracking service FlightRadar24 said the closure would affect more than 1,350 flights to and from Heathrow. This includes 679 scheduled to land and 678 due to take off from the airport.

So far one flight has been diverted to Birmingham Airport, but the London incident is not expected to cause delays to scheduled Birmigham Airport flights.

A Birmingham Airport spokesperson said: “There will be no delays to Birmingham Airport’s own customers, due to any diverted Heathrow aircraft into BHX. Airports regularly take diverts as part of normal operations, and flights inbound to London Heathrow will use multiple airports around the UK, and Ireland, or alternatively may return to their departure airport.

“We will assist with landing any diverted aircraft during the Heathrow closure today and work with those LHR airlines to repatriate their customers upon arrival into Birmingham."

FlightRadar24 said that 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.

Read more: Heathrow closed all day following electrical substation fire 

Online tracking services showed flights being diverted to Gatwick, Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris and Ireland’s Shannon Airport.

A number of flights were also turned around and returned to airports in Canada and the United States.

Gatwick Airport confirmed it had accepted seven diverted flights from locations including Singapore, Johannesburg, Lagos, Cape Town and Doha which were originally destined for Heathrow.

Shannon Airport in Co Clare confirmed it had accepted six diverted flights from Toronto, Atlanta, Bridgetown Barbados, Boston, Orlando and Newark.

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.”