A grass fire beside Heathrow's southern runway brought take-offs to a halt and forced the UK's busiest airport to operate on a single runway on Tuesday evening, leaving passengers facing delays and aircraft put into holding patterns.
The disruption began after reports of a blaze near the southern runway, identified in aviation feeds as the threshold of runway 09R/27L. Social media images showed a plume of smoke rising beyond the taxiways, visible from at least one passenger terminal, as departures were paused and Heathrow briefly ran on a single runway.
