'I need to be home': stranded Heathrow passengers separated from loved ones

By Catarina Demony

LONDON, March 21 (Reuters) - Thousands of travellers stranded by a huge fire near London's Heathrow, Europe's busiest airport, scrambled to find ways to get home and reunite with their families on Friday as they faced what could be days of disruptions.

Heathrow was shut after a blaze that erupted overnight at a substation in the west of London, knocking out power to the airport and surrounding area.

Airlines advised passengers not to travel to Heathrow.

Waiting at central London's Paddington station, which normally offers express train services to Heathrow, U.S. citizen Tyler Prieb was contacting airlines to find a way back home to Nashville, Tennessee.

"I'm sure everybody is going to need a new flight somewhere, somehow. So I'm just trying to get ahead of that the best I can," said Prieb, 36, who was in London for work and to see friends.

"Hopefully, it will just take me an extra day to get back to my wife and my daughter," he said.

In the meantime, Prieb said he had asked OpenAI's chatbot ChatGPT for ways to pass the time.

"I thought maybe I'd go explore another city somewhere," he said.

Heathrow was due to handle 1,351 flights on Friday, flying up to 291,000 passengers.

John Moriarty, another U.S. traveller, listened attentively to his phone's speaker, hoping to get through to customer service and book a new flight home to Boston to see his daughter, who had travelled from New York to visit him.

"All the lines are busy, so I might be here another day. Not the worst thing in the world. (London) is my favourite city, but I need to be home," 75-year-old Moriarty said.

'PRETTY STRESSED OUT'

Travel experts said the disruption would extend far beyond Heathrow, and global flight schedules would be affected more broadly.

"I'm pretty stressed out," Robyn Autry, 39, from New York, said. "I do have animals back home that I need to get to."

The university professor said she was looking at "very, very expensive" flights out of other London airports and considering departures from cities including Bristol and Manchester.

"I think I'm going to have to pay a lot of money out of pocket today," she said.

Chicago couple Anna Schiferl, 26, and Charlie Katt, 27, said they were experiencing the latest episode in a long history of holiday adversity, including out-of-season hurricanes, illnesses and apartment rental misadventures.

"We're engaged, and we've had just horrible travel luck ... our whole relationship," Schiferl said. "We are with each other so that's good. We have enough clothes, enough underwear. We're going to be fine."

Mahmoud Ali, 40, an employee of Domino's Pizza in London, had been due to fly to his native Pakistan to be with his wife and children, who he has not seen since last summer.

"They are waiting for me. I'm trying to call the airline and Heathrow (to find out) what time the situation will be resolved," he said.

The fire also forced the rerouting of incoming flights, leaving some passengers unsure of where they would land.

Adrian Spender, who works at British retailer Tesco, said in a post on X that he was on an Airbus A380 that had been headed for Heathrow.

"#Heathrow no idea where we are going yet. Currently over Austria," he wrote.