India, March 22 -- Flights resumed at Britain's Heathrow Airport late Friday hours after a massive fire forced Europe's busiest airport to shut completely and left thousands of passengers stranded.

Heathrow Airport chief executive Thomas Woldbye apologised to stranded passengers and defended the response to an "unprecedented" loss of power caused by a substation fire.

Woldbye described the blaze, which knocked out an electricity substation in Hayes late on Thursday evening as "as big as it gets for our airport" and that "we cannot guard ourselves 100%", the PA Media reported

The West London airport initially announced it would be closed until 11.59 pm (EST) but later said repatriation flights for passengers diverted to other airports i...