All roads leading to Heathrow Airport in the United Kingdom have reopened following disruption caused by flooding from a burst water main on the airport’s Inner Ring Road West.
The flooding temporarily restricted access to the Central Terminal Area, which houses Terminals 2 and 3, as well as several other airport facilities and connecting roads.
Heathrow Airport said operations had returned to normal but advised passengers to use public transport where possible because of heavy traffic congestion around the airport.
The disruption, which began shortly before 06:00 BST, caused difficulties for some travellers trying to reach their flights.
One affected passenger, 79-year-old George Smyrniadis, missed his flight to Frankfurt, where he was due to attend a school reunion on Saturday afternoon.
Speaking to the BBC, Smyrniadis said, “I was upset. It’s the first reunion I’ve missed since 1987.
“I was so downhearted I just wanted to get home.
“The whole airport seemed completely chaotic, but I got the impression the airlines just carried on as though nothing was wrong – and if you missed your flight you just missed it.”
Smyrniadis said his journey from Portsmouth had been smooth until he left the M4 motorway, after which he spent about 90 minutes in traffic covering a route that normally takes around 10 minutes.
“By the time I got to security it was too late – it was already 09:30BST so they wouldn’t let me go through any further.”
Despite the flooding, no water entered the airport terminals and flights were not affected, according to reports.
The burst pipes are owned by Heathrow Airport, which was responsible for carrying out the repairs.
The disruption occurred during the school summer holiday period, one of the busiest travel periods of the year.
Heathrow said 19 July had been its busiest day of the year so far, with about 267,000 passengers travelling through the airport as schools across the UK began their summer break.
A Heathrow spokesperson said, “Following earlier road flooding impacting access to Terminals 2 and 3, all roads have now reopened and the airport continues to operate as normal.
“We apologise for any inconvenience caused and we thank passengers for following the advisories we had put in place while our teams worked to resolve the situation as quickly as possible.”
The latest incident comes after Heathrow was recently hit by further transport disruption when a water leak forced the closure of a railway tunnel serving the airport.
