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'No idea where we can land', pilot tells passengers on diverted Heathrow flight as plane stranded in Belgium
21 March 2025, 09:06 | Updated: 21 March 2025, 09:32
Nick Ferrari hears from caller Tim
A passenger on a flight diverted from Heathrow after the airport closed has told LBC the pilot told them they had "no idea" where they could land instead.
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Tim, who was flying back to London from Bangkok in Thailand, ended up stranded in Brussels with nowhere else to land.
More than 1,300 flights to and from Heathrow Airport have been disrupted on Friday due to the closure of the airport following a fire at a nearby electrical substation.
Online flight tracking service FlightRadar24 said the closure would affect more than 1,350 flights to and from Heathrow. This includes 679 scheduled to land and 678 due to take off from the airport.
Tim called LBC's Nick Ferrari at Breakfast from the tarmac in the Belgian capital after sitting there for four hours, on top of a 12-hour flight from Bangkok.
Tim said that the pilot told them: "We don't know where we're going to go yet."
He told Nick that ending up in Belgium was "better than being turned back all the way back to Asia, I suppose."
Asked when they were likely to end up getting back to the UK, he said: "It's a big aircraft so it's going to be a decent sized airfield, isn't it?
"They refuelled us and the captain's just waiting for a slot somewhere to fit us in in the UK."
Ed Miliband's response to the fire near Heathrow
Tim added: "What's annoying is that they haven't come around with any [food or drinks]. I've gone down to get some water."
They later ended up being taken off the plane and waited in the airport for a plane to take them back to the UK.
Some 120 flights to the airport were in the air when the closure was announced.
Heathrow is the UK's largest airport, with more than 83.9 million passengers travelling through its terminals in 2024.
