A British Airways 777 came up short of the runway at London’s Heathrow this afternoon (~1300 GMT). All 136 passengers were evacuated safely, and the airport was only shut down completely for about 90 minutes, though it seems that one runway is still out of service.
LHR is tremendously busy on a typical day, and they only have the two runways, so with one closed there is not a lot of slack in the capacity to handle all the displaced planes. Things are going to be ugly over there for a while.
And, in a strange twist that I find entertaining every time I see it, the first official response is that the event is not terrorism related. I’m not sure why everyone assumes that everything is these days until they are told otherwise, but that’s a whole different ball of wax to get in to.
There’s a pretty good discussion and collection of news links and photos on FlyerTalk right now.
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