Restrictions on overnight flights at Heathrow temporarily lifted

Restrictions on overnight flights have been temporarily lifted to help ease congestion following the closure of Heathrow Airport.

The Department of Transport confirmed the information in a post on X.

According to Heathrow’s website, there is no formal ban on night flights but since the 1960s, the Government has placed restrictions on them. There is an annual limit of 5,800 night-time take-offs and landings between the hours of 11.30pm and 6am as well as a nightly limit, which caps the amount of noise the airport can make at night.

The DfT also said it had allowed passengers to use rail tickets flexibly.

Heathrow’s chief executive said they will “look at anything we can learn from this” after the west London airport was closed following the outage caused by the substation fire.

Thomas Woldbye told reporters: “Of course, we (will) look at anything we can learn from this, but I should say our backup systems have worked the way they should, our crisis management has worked the way it should.

“This just takes time when we have an incident of this major severity.”

On the Prime Minister wanting to ask questions of him about why the incident happened and what can be done to prevent a repetition, Mr Woldbye said: “The Prime Minister should ask his questions and we’ll be happy to answer.”

Published: 21/03/2025 by Radio NewsHub