With Heathrow Airport, the UK's busiest travel hub, closed on Friday due to a nearby fire and power outage, the airline has told thousands of travelers have not traveled to the airport and will check for updates online.
Around 80 airlines operate in Heathrow and sent back to its origins while bounced away inbound flights to other UK airports, or scrambling to rebook the journey.
“This will clearly have a big impact on our operations and our customers,” British Airways said in a statement. According to data from Flightradar24, the airline was most affected as around 340 flights scheduled to land at Heathrow on Friday.
The airline had already redirected all flights on its way to Heathrow to other UK airports on Friday morning.
Another British airline, Virgin Atlantic, said it had cancelled all flights until 9:30pm in London.
The airline had asked customers not to travel to Heathrow or scheduled departure airports if Heathrow is their destination and did not contact customer service. Instead, travelers must check flight status on the airline's website, and those with cancelled flights will be emailed with details of their rebooking.
Air France had cancelled eight return flights from Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport to Heathrow on Friday, but flights to other UK airports were operating normally, the airline said.
Dutch airline KLM said it would cancel three return flights from Amsterdam to London Heathrow and re-book passengers. However, the airline said it would try to accommodate passengers with an “urgent need” to fly to London by placing them on flights to airports near London.
German airline Lufthansa said all customers on flights inside and outside Heathrow have been rebooked, but urged customers to update their contact details.
Nine flights by Qatar Airways between Heathrow and Hamad International Airport near Doha have been affected. For example, one flight was redirected to Frankfurt and the other to Brussels.
Air India had cancelled most of its flights to Heathrow, but one person returned to Mumbai and the other was repurposed to Frankfurt.
Australian airline Qantas said the service from Singapore to London and Perth to Perth was converted to Paris on Friday, with buses arranged to take customers to London. The flights departing from Sydney and Perth on Friday were scheduled to land in London on Saturday morning and were still scheduled to run as normal.
On their website, most airlines say that cancelled flights are rebooked for free. Airlines can be costly because they redirect flights and compensate customers for hotel rooms, food, transportation and other costs associated with fallen schedules.
Airline stocks fell in European trading. The losses were mitigated in the middle, but shares in IAG, the parent company of British Airways, Aer Lingus, Iberia and two other airlines, fell by about 1%. Air France-KLM shares fell approximately 1.6%.
Irish airline Ryanair said it has added eight “rescue” flights to its Friday and Saturday schedule between Dublin and London's Stansted airport.
Lauren Leatherby, Melissa Eddie and Liz Alderman contributed to the report.
