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The Independent
08-05-2025
- The Independent
Heathrow power outage: How airport chaos unfolded as cause remains ‘unknown'
The collapse of power supplies in Spain and Portugal in April led to the cancellation of around 500 flights. Yet when London Heathrow suffered a partial loss of power on Friday 21 March, nearly three times as many departures and arrivals were grounded. The airport's chief executive, Thomas Woldbye, insisted the shutdown was the only possible response because of safety concerns. He told MPs on the Transport Select Committee: 'On the day of the incident, our focus was very clear and immediate: to protect the safety of passengers and airport staff, to protect the security of the airport and the integrity of our borders, and to minimise disruption and resume operations as soon as possible.' Losses to airlines could be as much as £100m, according to Nigel Wicking, chief executive of the Heathrow Airline Operators' Committee. 'There were 1,300 cancellations on the day, and nearly 300,000 passengers were disrupted,' Mr Wicking says. More than 100 further flights were cancelled over the next couple of days. One of two reviews into the shutdown has now been published. The National Energy System Operator (NESO) has published the North Hyde Review Interim Report, which sets out a timeline from the power perspective – though the cause of the fire remains unknown. The Independent has combined new information from the report with on-the-day events and other sources to piece together the definitive sequence of events behind a shutdown with devastating emotional and economic consequences. Heathrow's own investigation, the Kelly Review, is expected to be handed to the airport's board later this month. Thursday 20 March 11.21pm: One of three 'supergrid transformers' at the North Hyde substation in Hayes, northeast of Heathrow, goes out of service. One minute after SGT3 fails, SGT2 automatically switches into service. It had been 'running on hot standby,' according to NESO. 'This operated as designed and restored a two-transformer supply into North Hyde 66kV substation, with no interruption of supply to customers,' the report says. North Hyde usually feeds one of the three Heathrow substations. The airport has two other substations, B and C, and two other supply sources – from Iver and Laleham. 11.22pm: London Fire Brigade receives the first call about a blaze at the substation. Heathrow CEO Thomas Woldbye later tells MPs that the fire and subsequent power failure is "a very low-probability event'. NESO later says: 'When necessary, for example in the event of a fault, it is possible to reconfigure supplies to be fed from a different point. This takes significant network switching, and prior to the event was understood to take a number of hours to enact.' 11.28pm: First fire appliance arrives on site. Nine more would join it during the night. 11.49pm: All power is lost from North Hyde when SGT1 and its circuit, which was also feeding SGT2, trips. 'The sudden and extreme heat of the fire meant that all three transformers on site tripped out of service,' says Alice Delahunty, president, UK Electricity Transmission, for National Grid. The outage hits 66,919 customers, including Heathrow Substation A. 'Power was lost to some airport terminals and some shared systems required for overall airport operations,' says NESO. Heathrow's airfield ring generators automatically start. They provide power to the runways and essential safety systems, maintaining the ability to land aircraft safely. 11.57pm: Within 50 minutes, 42,000 customers have had power restored. But Heathrow still has problems. Airport boss Thomas Woldbye says later that the power cut hit Terminal2, parts of Terminal 4 and the access tunnel to Terminals 2 and 3 – 'critical parts of the infrastructure'. He adds that power was also lost to 'buildings that house systems that are airport-wide, such as CCTV, some of the fuelling safety systems, and security locking systems for doors'. They were lost 'at least momentarily'. Friday 21 March 12.15am: First response meeting convened by National Grid. 12.30am-1am: Thomas Woldbye later testifies: 'We realised we were losing power to the airport. In our operations centre you would have seen all the red lights go, that all the systems were powering down. We had no indication as to why. We then at a slightly later stage got a call from the fire department that the substation was on fire. 'We were in a very uncertain situation for many, many hours, until 6 o'clock in the morning, because we could not get information on how long this could last, but we could see that one-third of the airport was powering down. 'This is first and foremost a safety situation. We need to make sure, when a crisis happens, that people are safe.' 12.42am: Met Police declare a 'major incident'. 1.11am: Decision is made to close Heathrow all day on Friday. Soon afterwards, some flights return to their starting points while others seek diversion airports. 2.14am: Heathrow issues its first media statement, confirming closure until 11.59pm on Friday – wiping out the entire day's operations. The statement says 'We do not have clarity on when power may be reliably restored. To maintain the safety of our passengers and colleagues, we have no choice but to close Heathrow until 23h59 on 21 March 2025. 'We expect significant disruption over the coming days and passengers should not travel to the airport under any circumstances until the airport reopens.' 2.22am: London Fire Brigade drone takes photo of the height of the blaze at the SGT3 transformer. 3.30am: BBC Radio 5 Live tells listeners the news, shortly followed by LBC Radio. At the same time, Heathrow notifies the Department for Transport about the closure. 4am: By now, power has been restored to 92 per cent of customers – but not to the Heathrow power intake. 5am: Some of the first flights due to land at Heathrow on Friday morning touch down at Paris CDG. Qantas passengers from QF9 from Perth, and QF1 from Sydney and Singapore, are put on buses to London. The chief executive of the Australian airline, Vanessa Hudson, later tells reporters: " London's airport infrastructure was paralysed, and there was no way to continue travel by plane. A train transfer would have been logistically difficult, as hundreds of seats weren't available at short notice. Buses were the fastest available option." 5.30am: Airlines join a 'community call' with Nats, the air-traffic control organisation. Nigel Wicking of the Heathrow Airline Operators' Committee later says: 'They had run out of space for aircraft to divert to in the UK. Aircraft were then going to Europe, and some were even halfway across Europe and were going back to base in India. 'It was quite a level of disruption for those passengers, let alone all of the cancellations.' Mr Wicking's organisation reminds airlines of their duty of care – that they provide meals and hotels where required, as well as finding alternative flights or paying refunds swiftly. 6am: 'The fire was still blazing,' Heathrow boss Thomas Woldbye later says. He asserts the choice to close down was correct: 'I am satisfied that the decision that we took to power up, based on our two substations, was the right one. That then implies that we would have to shut down the airport in order to power down, rewire and power up the systems. That requires closing the airport.' The airport CEO adds the process takes about 10 hours. 'We have to power down maybe 1,000 systems before we do that switch, and then we have to switch it back on and power up 1,000 systems. 'We would be able to land aircraft, but we would then be leaving them on the runways with passengers in them, not being able to process them because we did not have the safety. That is not an acceptable situation for passengers.' At the same time, BBC Breakfast, Sky News Breakfast, GB News Breakfast and ITV's Good Morning Britain go on air, all leading their programmes with the news from Heathrow. This is the first that some passengers due to travel on Friday 21 March get to hear about what is expected to be a complete shutdown. 6.25am: Heathrow's control centre re-energises all primary substations by reconfiguring its private network. 9.49am Power is restored to Heathrow's substation and all remaining customers. 10am: SSEN, the local energy provider, tells Heathrow it can draw all the electricity it needed. This is the point from which Terminal 5, according to airlines' representative Nigel Wicking, 'was fine to operate'. But Heathrow's Thomas Woldbye says that at 10am 'fuel lines were still a question'. 10.56am: Power is restored to all the airport terminals. 12 noon: Ryanair is halfway through a very profitable Friday, with stranded passengers spending an estimated €200,000 (£170,000) on flights with Europe's biggest budget airline. 'We took about 10,000 extra bookings,' chief executive Michael O'Leary later says. 'Just another example of a Great British f***-up.' The Ryanair boss clarifies the expression, saying: 'That's an aviation term.' Eurostar, easyJet and Jet2 also see last-minute bookings surge as people seek alternatives to Heathrow. At about the same time, passengers on BA176 from New York are finally allowed to leave the aircraft from New York which has been on the ground in Manchester for five hours. Phil Dean told The Independent: 'The pilot told us the diversion was due to a fire that had closed Heathrow, he said Manchester wasn't prepared for the diversions and there was a queue as the airport would have to bring stairs and buses. He said we were third in the queue and anticipated we might have to wait around an hour and a half. 'At midday, we were eventually allowed to disembark. The staff seemed surprised to see us, laughing as they told us they thought all the diverted passengers had long gone. ' 1.30pm: Airport teams begin safety checks to reopen for some repositioning and repatriation flights to Heathrow. 2.23pm: Heathrow's entire power network is restored. Once the lights were back on, says NESO: 'There was a period of safety checking to allow all parties operating the airport to access their systems and to ensure safety critical systems were fully operational prior to passengers arriving at the airport.' 4pm: 'The airport was 100 per cent confident that all systems were safely operating across the whole network,' says the transport secretary, Heidi Alexander. At the same time, a Microsoft Teams meeting between the airport and interested parties 'maxes out' with 1,000 participants. 6.01pm: The first of 10 'repatriation flights' – bringing back some of the many diverted planes – lands at Heathrow. 8.42pm: British Airways flight BA259 becomes the first departure of the day, taking off for Riyadh. Seven more flights follow, mainly on BA. 'Sean Doyle [British Airways CEO] and I were instrumental in getting some critical BA flights with passengers out on the same evening.' Mr Woldbye later says. Saturday 22 March 2.22am: North Hyde's SGT2 transformer, which is 100 feet from the badly damaged SGT1 and 3, is put 'on load'. 4am: Heathrow opens fully – though there are 100 further cancellations as airlines struggle to get their schedules back on track. Around a dozen further flights are grounded on Sunday due to the closure two days earlier. Wednesday 26 March 5.13pm: Only now does London Fire Brigade confirm 'cessation of firefighting' at North Hyde – five days and 18 hours after it first arrived on site to tackle the blaze. Thursday 8 May 7am: NESO publishes the North Hyde Review Interim Report (the final report will be made by the end of June). 7.18am: A Heathrow spokesperson sends a response, saying the report 'raises important questions for National Grid and SSEN that we hope the final report will provide answers to, including the cause of the fire'. The airport statement adds: 'Further clarity on how the fire started and why two transformers were subsequently impacted can help ensure greater resilience for the UK's energy grid moving forward.' A National Grid spokesperson said: 'We now look forward to the full findings and will continue to work closely with the National Energy System Operator as its independent review process continues." A spokesperson for SSEN Distribution welcomed 'the timeline detailing the significant operational response, of which SSEN played its part'. 10.05am: Heathrow Reimagined, a lobbying group representing airlines and a leading property owner at the airport, says: 'For too long, inefficient spending has been enabled by a flawed regulatory framework and resulted in a lack of basic operational resilience.' Simon Gallagher, managing director of the energy consultancy UK Network Services, posted on LinkedIn: 'It took Heathrow six hours to do the HV [high voltage] switching to get their primary network live, and a further five hours to get the full network live – this is very long time for this. 'Heathrow needs to answer questions on why it took so long to do the HV switching, and then why it took so long to open the airport.'
Yahoo
02-04-2025
- Yahoo
Heathrow ‘was warned about risk to power supplies' days before outage
Heathrow Airport was warned about risks to its power supply days before it closed because of a major fire. Nigel Wicking, the chief executive of the Heathrow Airline Operators Committee, which represents airlines that use the London airport, told MPs on Wednesday that there were a 'couple of incidents' that made him concerned. The airport was closed to all flights until about 6pm on March 21, after a power outage caused by a fire at a nearby electricity substation that started the previous night. More than 270,000 air passenger journeys were disrupted. Speaking before the transport select committee, Mr Wicking said he spoke to the Team Heathrow director on March 15 about his concerns, as well as the chief operating officer and chief customer officer on March 19. He said: 'It was following a couple of incidents of, unfortunately, theft of wire and cable around some of the power supply that, on one of those occasions, took out the lights on the runway for a period of time. 'That obviously made me concerned and, as such, I raised the point I wanted to understand better the overall resilience of the airport.' Mr Wicking said he believed Heathrow's Terminal 5 could have been ready to receive repatriation flights by 'late morning' on the day of the closure, and that 'there was opportunity also to get flights out'. This is a breaking news story. More to follow Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Yahoo
02-04-2025
- Yahoo
Heathrow bosses 'warned about substation' days before major power outage, MP committee hears
Heathrow Airport bosses had been warned of potential substation failures less than a week before a major power outage closed the airport for a day, a committee of MPs has heard. The chief executive of Heathrow Airline Operators' Committee Nigel Wicking told MPs of the Transport Committee he raised issues about resilience on 15 March after cable and wiring took out lights on a runway. A fire at an electricity substation in west London meant the power supply was disrupted to Europe's largest airport for a day - causing travel chaos for nearly 300,000 passengers, the committee heard. "I'd actually warned Heathrow of concerns that we had with regard to the substations and my concern was resilience", said Mr Wicking, the head of a body representing more than 90 airlines using Heathrow Airport. "So the first occasion was to team Heathrow director on the 15th of the month of March. And then I also spoke to the chief operating officer and chief customer officer two days before regarding this concern. "And it was following a number of, a couple of incidents of, unfortunately, theft, of wire and cable around some of the power supply that on one of those occasions, took out the lights on the runway for a period of time. That obviously made me concerned." Mr Wicking also said he believed Heathrow's Terminal 5 could have been ready to receive repatriation flights by "late morning" on the day of the closure, and that "there was opportunity also to get flights out". "It is the most expensive airport in the world with regard to passenger challenges. So from our perspective, that means we should actually have the best service. We should have the best infrastructure," he added. Other problems The biggest challenge was information, Mr Wicking said. The desire for information on the outage and closure was so large that a Teams call on the day of the closure was "maxed out" with "a thousand participants", he added. However, Heathrow chief executive Thomas Woldbye said keeping the airport open during last month's power outage would have been "disastrous". There was a risk of having "literally tens of thousands of people stranded in the airport, where we have nowhere to put them", Mr Woldbye told MPs. This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly. Please refresh the page for the fullest version. You can receive breaking news alerts on a smartphone or tablet via the Sky News app. You can also follow us on WhatsApp and subscribe to our YouTube channel to keep up with the latest news.
The Independent
10-02-2025
- Business
- The Independent
Airlines attack Heathrow for ‘world's highest passenger charges' and ‘declining service'
Heathrow's key customers – airlines and hotels – are demanding lower charges and higher standards at the UK's busiest airport. Virgin Atlantic, British Airways ' parent IAG, the Heathrow Airline Operators' Committee (AOC) and the Arora hotel group have joined forces in an unprecedented coordinated attack on the airport's regulatory regime. They hope to persuade the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) 'to conduct an urgent and fundamental review into the way in which Heathrow, the UK's only hub airport and the largest in Europe, is regulated, for the benefit of consumers, businesses, and the UK economy'. In a new campaign called Heathrow Reimagined, they say current arrangements are not fit for purpose. 'Heathrow has become the world's most expensive airport, with passengers and airlines today paying £1.1bn more each year than if charges were in line with equivalent major European airports,' the partners said in a statement. ' Heathrow Airport Limited's substantial market power has, for too long, given it an incentive to spend inefficiently which means it has acted against the interest of both consumers and airlines.' At present, charges are calibrated by the CAA according to the 'regulated asset base' of Heathrow – broadly speaking, the value of the airport facilities. When investment is made into new facilities, the asset base increases. Shai Weiss, chief executive of Virgin Atlantic said: 'Heathrow is failing consumers, airlines and the UK economy, with ageing facilities and a declining customer experience.' Nigel Wicking, Chief Executive of Heathrow AOC, said: 'The airline community want to offer travellers, to and from the UK, a great experience through Heathrow and we want growth, also avoiding the disproportionate costs we too often see by Heathrow Airport Limited.' Surinder Arora, founder of the Arora Group, said: 'I have worked in and around Heathrow for several decades and have seen with my own eyes the decline in what used to be the world's best airport. The current monopoly at Heathrow doesn't only vastly overcharge passengers on aviation fees but also on their parking and a variety of other services.' The government is backing plans for a third runway at Heathrow, which is currently expected to cost £14.4bn. The project could increase passenger numbers by 45 million from the current 84 million. But the campaign group says Istanbul is developing a completely new airport with capacity for up to 200 million passengers for £10bn. The Independent has asked Heathrow airport for a response. After the chancellor backed the third runway plan, the airport said: 'Heathrow is the UK's gateway to growth and prosperity. A third runway and the infrastructure that comes with it would unlock billions of pounds of private money to stimulate the UK supply chain during construction. 'Once built, it would create jobs and drive trade, tourism and inward investment to every part of the country. It would also give airlines and passengers the competitive, resilient hub airport they expect while putting the UK back on the map at the heart of the global economy.' Separately, the airport has unveiled a refurbished and rebranded private terminal, 'providing a discreet, luxury experience to high profile guests'. The Windsor by Heathrow, as it is called, charges £3,812 for up to three 'ultra-high-profile guests from world leaders to A-list celebrities – offering unmatched discretion, convenience and a seamless travel experience'.
