Closure of London’s Heathrow airport results in journey chaos | Invesloan.com

Good morning and welcome back to FirstFT. A fire near Heathrow in west London has shut the airport, causing travel chaos around the world. We will bring you the latest and this is what else we are covering:

• Plans to transfer defence powers from US

• Disney’s controversial Snow White remake

• Trump’s assault on the US’s liberal elite

• And can Ozempic become a weapon of war?

Hundreds of thousands of airline passengers face delays and cancellations today after a fire near London’s Heathrow forced the airport to close.

More than 1,300 flights have been cancelled following the fire at an electrical substation near the airport which blazed throughout the night. The West London fire brigade said it brought the fire “under control” early this morning but that the cause of the blaze was not yet known.

A total of 679 flights were scheduled to land and 678 flights were scheduled to take off from Heathrow today, according to data from Flightradar24, an aviation tracking service. Planes arriving from North America and Asia earlier this morning were redirected to other airports in the UK and across Europe, including Shannon in Ireland, Frankfurt in Germany and Paris Charles de Gaulle after the unprecedented outage.

Heathrow, which last year handled nearly 84mn passengers, is now facing questions over how a fire at one electrical substation could knock out its entire operations for 24 hours. An executive said that while the airport did have backup power options for its key systems, these did not all necessarily kick in immediately. Our live blog is following developments and will be updated throughout the day.

And here’s what else we’re keeping tabs on today and over the weekend:

• Germany: The country’s upper house of parliament is expected to pass a historic constitutional reform to borrowing rules, including a €500bn fund for infrastructure and de facto unlimited spending for defence and security.

• Monetary policy: Federal Reserve Bank of New York president John Williams gives a speech in Nassau, Bahamas. Chile‘s central bank is expected to hold its benchmark interest rate at 5 per cent.

• China Development Forum: Global business leaders gather in Beijing for the annual conference, which begins on Sunday.

How well did you keep up with the news this week? Take our quiz.

Five more top stories

1. Europe’s biggest military powers are drawing up plans to take on greater responsibilities for the continent’s defence from the US, including a pitch to the Trump administration for a managed transfer over the next five to 10 years. The discussions are an attempt to avoid the chaos of a unilateral US withdrawal from Nato.

2. Israel’s cabinet has voted unanimously to sack the head of the Shin Bet internal security agency, Ronen Bar, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had lost confidence in his domestic spy chief. Tensions between Netanyahu and Bar have simmered since Hamas’s devastating October 7 2023 attack on Israel.

3. Global companies have started to drop climate goals from executive pay plans as the corporate world retreats from ESG initiatives in the face of fierce US opposition and mounting costs. Here are the groups that have changed sustainability targets.

4. The live-action remake of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs has dragged Disney back into the culture wars despite chief executive Bob Iger’s attempts to lower the political temperature. The controversies appear to have dented box office prospects for the film, which opens in cinemas today.

5. Deloitte, PwC and KPMG have launched a scathing attack on the Internal Revenue Service, which they accused of “a pattern of arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable conduct” towards multinational companies that risks eroding confidence in the US tax system. The claims about the US tax authority appeared in a court filing this week involving Coca-Cola.

Today’s Big Read

Columbia University, USAID, the Department of Education and Voice of America have all been targeted in recent weeks by President Donald Trump and his supporters. It is part of a multipronged assault on America’s elite that includes Ivy League universities, judges and Trump’s favourite punchbag — the liberal media.

We’re also reading . . . 

Chart of the day

Mark Carney, Canada’s new prime minister, is on Sunday expected to fire the starting gun in his country’s general election. Carney will announce the poll less than a fortnight after replacing Justin Trudeau as head of Canada’s Liberal party, which has seen its popularity soar in response to threats of annexation and punitive tariffs from US President Donald Trump. The election campaign will pit Carney against Conservative party leader Pierre Poilievre. Here’s how they stand in the polls.

Take a break from the news . . . 

The FT’s food and drink experts — Jay Rayner, Marina O’Loughlin, Jancis Robinson and Tim Hayward — have a combined century-plus of experience as professional diners and have strong opinions on how to make the most of eating out in 2025. But when those views were sent to a panel of the world’s most esteemed food connoisseurs they were ripped to shreds.