Heathrow Airport is “open and fully operational” after a fire at an off-site power substation caused major disruption on Friday, grounding over 1,300 flights and affecting around 200,000 passengers.
A spokesperson for Heathrow said early this morning there were hundreds of extra staff on hand to help 10,000 extra passengers on Saturday.
He said: “Teams across the airport continue to do everything they can to support passengers impacted by yesterday’s outage at an off-airport power substation.
“Passengers travelling today should check with their airline for the latest information regarding their flight.”
After more than 1,300 flights were grounded on Friday around 100 more have been axed by airlines whose flight crew and aircraft are now out of position.
British Airways has cancelled almost 80 flights on Saturday after almost its entire schedule was grounded on Friday.
The Metropolitan Police are not treating the incident as suspicious and the London Fire Brigade’s investigation is focusing on the electrical distribution equipment.
‘Worst disruption for 15 years’
Heathrow is Europe’s largest airport, with more than 83.9 million passengers travelling through its terminals in 2024.
But Friday’s fire is believed to be the worst disruption at Heathrow since December 2010, when thousands of Christmas getaway passengers camped in the terminals because of widespread cancellations caused by snow.
In April of that year, air travel was grounded across Europe because of an ash cloud caused by an Icelandic volcanic eruption.
‘Fire not suspicious’ Police say after initial assessment
Counter-terrorism officers from the Metropolitan Police have been leading the investigation into the cause of the fire, which did not result in any casualties at the scene.
“After initial assessment, we are not treating this incident as suspicious, although inquiries do remain ongoing,” Commander Simon Messinger said.
Thousands of homes were left without power and more than 100 people were evacuated after a transformer within the substation caught fire.
Heathrow explains power failure
Heathrow Airport has explained why the backup generator could not power the whole airport.
It said: “We have multiple sources of energy into Heathrow. But when a source is interrupted, we have back-up diesel generators and uninterruptable power supplies in place, and they all operated as expected.
“Our back-up systems are safety systems which allow us to land aircraft and evacuate passengers safely, but they are not designed to allow us to run a full operation.
“As the busiest airport in Europe, Heathrow uses as much energy as a small city, therefore it’s not possible to have backup for all of the energy we need to run our operation safely.
“We are implementing a process which will allow us to redirect power to the affected areas, but this is a safety-critical process which takes time, and maintaining safety remains our priority, so we have taken the decision to close the airport for today.”
‘It could be days before passengers are sorted out’ says Transport Select Committee chair
Ruth Cadbury, chair of the Transport Select Committee, has been speaking exclusively to The Independent.
“Like everyone I feel most for the 200,000-old passengers who were affected – but also the airline and airport staff who have to deal with the frustration and stress of all those passengers who either need to get home or have to get to weddings, funerals, to start a holiday.
“All of those people who were due to fly yesterday and are still planning to make that journey – it could be days before they’re sorted out.”
Ms Cadbury, who is Labour MP for Brentford and Isleworth in west London, said questions about the resilience of the electricity supply in the area needed to be answered.
“We don’t actually know whether the issue is the responsibility of Heathrow airport or National Grid infrastructure,” she said.
“We have a grid capacity challenge in outer west London due to a lack of enhancements coming in, and the data centres – of which we have a cluster – taking so much power.
“Hopefully in the days or weeks to come, we will know more.”
‘No comment’ Heathrow Chief Executive asked if should lose his job
Asked if anyone should be fired for this, Heathrow chief executive Thomas Woldbye told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I’ll look back at that when I have all the details.
“Right now our focus is to make sure our passengers are safe and secure, that the airport is operating as it should so we can get aircraft in the air and get our passengers travelling.”
Asked if he should still be in his role, he said bluntly: “No comment to that. I’ll let others judge if they think that’s an issue.”
‘I’m proud of what people did’ Heathrow boss fights back
Responding to the accusation that Heathrow is a “laughing stock” after one fire closed the airport, Heathrow chief executive Thomas Woldbye said: “Personally I am quite proud of the entire eco-system – our airlines, our handlers.
“People got us out of the situation which was created outside of the airport.
“There will be questions but I don’t know of an airport that has back up supply that can switch on in minutes of the magnitude we saw yesterday. The same would happen in other airports.”
He said he would establish the facts before blaming anyone for the outage.
‘We were shut for hours, not days’
Heathrow chief executive Thomas Woldbye has admitted he was shocked by the “unprecedented” fire and said he would look at the “resilience” of Europe’s busiest airport.
He told the BBC’s Today programme: “The incident yesterday was major it was no small thing. It takes time to reset the airport. “But remember hospitals and homes and other areas went down.
“We have three substations that power different sections of the airport. But when one goes down entirely, which is unprecedented and we have to live with the consequences.
“The airport shut not for days, but for hours because we had to reroute our power supply that requires taking down systems and powering them up again.
“We will learn from this and will ask do we need another level of resilience if we can’t trust the grid around us is working the way it should.”
‘Heathrow uses as much energy as a city every day’ Airport boss explains back-up power failure
Heathrow chief executive Thomas Woldbye told the BBC’s Today programme: “We are sincerely sorry for the inconvenience that passengers have experienced.”
He said the power substation that caught fire was not part of Heathrow’s infrastructure.
“All our backup systems were up and running, our tower was running but our systems are not designed to power the entire airport. We would need a seperate standby powerplant on site and we don’t have that.
“Heathrow uses as much energy as a city every day. We don’t have backup power for fuel systems, bridges and so on.”
He added: “Everything comes to a standstill when we need to reset as we did yesterday.”
‘Airlines will handle stranded passengers’ Heathrow boss
Asked about reports disruptions could bleed into next week, Heathrow chief executive Thomas Woldbye told the BBC’s Today programme: “There are no disruptions to airport operations.
“Airlines, ofcourse, have tales of stranded passengers who need repatriation and so on and they will handle that.
“But the airport itself is running as normal.”
‘We will handle delays as we normally do’ Heathrow chief executive
Heathrow chief executive Thomas Woldbye has told the BBC’s Today programme in an update on Saturday morning: “We don’t expect any major flights to be delayed we are operating as normal.
“On any busy day, as today is, not just because of yesterday there are some cancellations and delays and we are handling them as we normaly do.”
Source: independent.co.uk
