Airlines warned Heathrow airport about concerns over the resilience of its electricity supply days before a power outage caused the closure of the UK’s busiest airport and hundreds of cancelled flights, MPs have heard.
Heathrow closed on March 21 after a massive fire at a nearby electricity substation caused a power cut at the airport, leading to the cancellation of more than 1,300 flights. The airport did not fully reopen for more than 24 hours.
“I’d actually warned Heathrow of concerns we had with regard to the substations, my concern was resilience,” Nigel Wicking, chief executive of Heathrow AOC, which represents airlines that use the airport, told the Transport select committee on Wednesday.
Wicking told MPs he had first raised his concerns on March 15, following “a couple of incidents of theft of wire and cable around some of the power supply that on one occasion took out a runway for a period of time”.
Thomas Woldbye, chief executive of Heathrow, apologised for the disruption to airlines and passengers. “The situation was unprecedented and we recognise the considerable concern and inconvenience it caused,” he said.
Woldbye insisted the airport had no choice but to close on safety grounds, but said the airport would review whether it could have reopened some terminals more quickly.
“I am absolutely committed to making sure we learn from this,” he added.
National Grid, which operates the UK’s high-voltage transmission network, said power had always been available to the airport from two other nearby substations, which were unaffected by the blaze.
The delay in reopening the airport was caused by Heathrow’s engineers having to reconfigure its power supply to take electricity from the other two substations, which took about 10 hours, Woldbye said.
He insisted Heathrow had “contracted a resilient set-up”, which includes “backup transformers [and] parallel lines into the airport from three different substations”.
“There is a question about where should the resilience lie,” he added.
