Heathrow Airport shutdown - Simon Calder explains all you need to knowSource: Simon Calder
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00:00I'm afraid the timing and the scale of the disruption at Heathrow is going to cause
00:06immense damage both economically and emotionally. There are more than 200,000 passengers booked to
00:15fly to, from or through London Heathrow on Friday the 21st of March, well over 1,300 flights, more
00:23than half of those on British Airways and suddenly at midnight we learnt that nothing is going to be
00:31taking off or landing. Already we're seeing large numbers of diversions, British Airways has managed
00:37to get its African flights into Gatwick, we've also got diversions to Shannon in the west of Ireland
00:44on BA from New York and from Barbados and on United Airlines from New York, Virgin Atlantic
00:52from Atlanta also landing in Shannon and people will be stumbling off the plane, blearily wondering
00:59how they are going to get to their final destination. I'm afraid it's going to be an
01:05awful day for people with bookings because well they clearly won't be travelling in and out of
01:12Heathrow and there is going to be disruption rumbling on through the weekend. It's clear that
01:19British Airways will have its planes, its pilots, its passengers in all corners of the world and
01:26just getting those people where they need to be when operations resume is going to be very difficult.
01:33Under air passenger rights rules anybody who's in the UK or indeed in the rest of Europe
01:39booked to fly to or from Heathrow has some pretty strong consumer rights but unfortunately
01:48the basic principle is that they will be flown to their destination as soon as possible
01:53and it is simply not at all clear when that might be. It's very much the case that
02:01EasyJet from Gatwick and Ryanair from Stansted saw their flights to key European destinations
02:08filling up very quickly and when flights to and from Heathrow resume it will be people who were
02:14booked on the services already who take priority. Everybody else is going to be put to the end of
02:21the queue scrabbling for whatever empty seats there are. Questions will be asked about how a
02:28critical piece of national infrastructure could fail like this. Of course electricity powers
02:34everything from the runway lights to the IT and everybody I hope will be working towards
02:42getting a solution for Heathrow and finding some way
02:45of this not happening again causing so much economic and emotional damage.