A parliamentary committee learned that airlines had notified Heathrow about power supply risks which turned out to be the cause of a substation fire that forced the airport shutdown. The airport’s chief executive Thomas Woldbye apologized for the disruption which affected more than 200,000 passengers while he explained the airport’s decision to shut down.
The Heathrow Airline Operators’ Committee CEO Nigel Wicking shared his pre-incident concerns about the power system with airport senior staff members only a few days before the outage occurred. The airport’s power resilience came into question because of previous cable theft incidents. The Heathrow CEO Woldbye stated that the power outage occurred at an extremely low probability while the airport had invested in power infrastructure described as resilient.
The process of switching to backup power systems received negative feedback because Wicking believed Terminal 5 operations could have started earlier in certain areas. The airline losses from airport closure amounted to between £60m and £100m according to Wicking’s estimate. National Grid officials declared the fire as an unprecedented occurrence because the extreme heat destroyed all backup transformers.
An independent review headed by former transport secretary Ruth Kelly now investigates Heathrow airport’s incident and its response.
