The fire near Heathrow Airport in London that knocked out power to one of the world’s busiest airports is now under control. The London Fire Brigade has informed this. The closure of the airport would last until midnight. Hundreds of thousands of passengers faced flight cancellations after a fire knocked out power to London’s Heathrow Airport, forcing it to close for the day.

Flames soared into the sky when a transformer at an electrical substation caught fire in west London late last night. The fire caused a widespread power outage, affecting thousands of homes and local businesses and disrupting thousands of flights. UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has said the blaze is unprecedented. He informed that the catastrophic fire knocked out a backup generator as well as the electrical substation that supplies power to Heathrow Airport. He, however, said that it’s too early to know the cause. Meanwhile, the closure of Heathrow rippled through global aviation.

At least 1,350 flights to and from Heathrow were already affected, including several from US cities that were cancelled. Aviation consultant John Strickland says it will be a disruption of several days before the planes will recover and move planned and disrupted passengers. He compared the disruption to a contained version of 9/11 or, to an extent, the Icelandic volcanic eruption ”that shut down European airspace in 2010.