The airline is the national carrier for Denmark, Sweden and Norway
A major European airline has responded after confusion saw it mixed up with a British special forces regiment during coverage of fire that shut Heathrow Airport on Friday.
More than 1,300 flights were cancelled and 200,000 passengers affected after the airport was closed for most of the day due to the fire in Hayes which knocked out an electricity substation.
Naturally the closure made headlines across the UK and around the world as airlines scrambled to confirm cancellations and diversions.
Amongst these was Scandinavian Airlines System, the national carrier of Norway, Denmark and Sweden, which confirmed its 12 round trips to Heathrow from Oslo, Copenhagen and Stockholm were amongst those affected.
However several media outlets confused the airline, better known by its initials – SAS – with the Special Air Service, Britain’s elite special forces regiment – with some outlets reporting the Hereford-based regiment had cancelled its flights from Heathrow.
In a statement online, the airline said ‘we get it’:
It added: “Same initials, both wear uniforms, operate internationally, and move fast. But only one SAS was affected by the Heathrow power outage. Spoiler: it was the one with the free coffee onboard, not the one with parachutes.”
Friday’s fire is believed to have been the worst disruption at Heathrow since 2010, when a volcanic eruption in Iceland saw planes cancelled across western Europe due to concerns about ash in the air.
Apologising to passengers about Friday’s closure, Heathrow Chief Executive Thomas Woldbye said: “I’d like to stress that this has been an incident of major severity. It’s not a small fire.
“We have lost power equal to that of a mid-sized city and our backup systems have been working as they should but they are not sized to run the entire airport.”
Asked if there is a weak point in Heathrow’s power system, he said: “You can say that but of course contingencies of certain sizes we cannot guard ourselves against 100% and this is one of them.
“This has been a major incident. I mean, short of anybody getting hurt, this is as big as it gets for our airport and we are actually coming back quite fast I would say, when you consider the amount of systems that we have to shut down then bring back up and make sure that they’re safe.”
He added: “This is unprecedented. It’s never happened before and that’s why I’m saying it has been a major incident.”
London Fire Brigade deputy commissioner Jonathan Smith said: “The fire involved a transformer comprising of 25,000 litres of cooling oil fully alight.
“This created a major hazard due to the still live high-voltage equipment and the nature of the oil-fuelled fire.”
