Exclusive
British plane passenger in 'stand-off with Belgian police' after getting stranded in Brussels amid Heathrow closure
21 March 2025, 11:41
Nick Ferrari hears from caller Tim
A British plane passenger has told of being left in a "stand-off" with Belgian police after getting stranded in Brussels when his flight was diverted from Heathrow.
Listen to this article
Loading audio...
Tim, who was flying back to London from Bangkok in Thailand, ended up stranded in Brussels with nowhere else to land.
The passengers were disembarked into the airport after several hours waiting on the runway, before being told they were getting back on the same plane - but now flying to Birmingham.
Videos shared with LBC showed the passengers then being left stuck in the bus that was taking them to the plane.
They were then told to get off the plane - because the slot in Birmingham had been cancelled - and ended up facing off with police.
After a brief stand-off they were then escorted back to police by the officers, and told they now had to make their own way back to the UK. Tim said the situation was "chaos" and said there was no one present from Thai Airways.
More than 1,300 flights to and from Heathrow Airport were disrupted on Friday due to the closure of the airport following a fire at a nearby electrical substation. Counter terror polie
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.
