(April 2): London Heathrow Airport was warned about possible issues with its power supplies a few days before a nearby fire cut electricity to the hub and forced Europe’s busiest airport into an unprecedented day-long blackout.

Heathrow Airline Operators’ Committee, which represents more than 90 carriers at the hub, raised concerns about the resilience of the North Hyde substation with airport executives following several incidents involving theft of wire and cable, the group’s head said on Wednesday during a hearing with the Transport Committee.

On one of the occasions, the runway lights went out for a period of time, which “obviously made me concerned”, Nigel Wicking said, adding that he alerted several Heathrow executives two days before the actual outage.

Heathrow was thrown into darkness on March 21 after a fire at the nearby electrical substation cut off its power supply, resulting in hundreds of cancelled flights. A backup systems allowed for some planes to land and passengers to evacuate, but wasn’t enough to support full operations. Lawmakers, airline executives and the flying public have since questioned how one of the country’s most vital pieces of infrastructure could become vulnerable to a single point of failure.

The closure brought flights to a standstill for a full day, leaving passengers in chaos and aircraft stranded in the wrong locations. The Transport Committee questioned Heathrow on Wednesday about the speed in which it responded to the blackout and why it decided to close all terminals.

Appearing before the committee, Heathrow chief executive officer Thomas Woldbye apologised for the turmoil, while saying it would have been worse to keep the airport open and allow passengers to travel from an unsafe airport. Among critical systems, CCTV, fire surveillance and other services were not available across the airport because of the outage, he said.

“We could not take any other decision,” Woldbye said. “We’re still at a stage where we don’t know why it happened.”

Heathrow is undertaking an internal review into its own response to the incident, while an independent investigation by the government will look into what caused the substation fire.

The airport managed to restart some flights late in the day, but services remained disrupted over the weekend. Terminal 5, from where British Airways operates, could have been opened earlier on Friday to take repatriation flights, Wicking told the committee.

“The fact that the lights were on at Terminal 5, which is entirely correct, doesn’t mean the terminal was operational,” Woldbye said.

Read also:
Heathrow defends handling of blackout, saying shutdown unavoidable
Heathrow resumes operations as global airlines scramble after shutdown

Uploaded by Chng Shear Lane