Latest news with #Wicking
ITV News
08-05-2025
- ITV News
Interim report into Heathrow power outage after fire to be published
An interim report into the power outage caused by a substation fire that shut Heathrow Airport will be published later today. The airport was closed to all flights until about 6pm on Friday March 21, after a power outage caused by a fire at a nearby electricity substation, which started late the previous night. This disrupted more than 270,000 air passenger journeys. In the immediate aftermath of the fire, the National Energy System Operator was ordered by Energy Secretary Ed Miliband to investigate what happened and provide its initial findings within six weeks. The interim report will focus on 'establishing the timeline and sequence of events of the outage, explain the roles and responsibilities of the key stakeholders involved, and outline areas of further investigation required to deliver the final report by the end of June 2025', NESO said. Last month, MPs were told Heathrow Airport had been warned about its power supply in the days before the incident. Nigel Wicking, chief executive of Heathrow Airline Operators Committee, which represents airlines that use the west London airport, said a 'couple of incidents' had made him concerned. He told the Transport Select Committee that he spoke to the Team Heathrow director on March 15 about his power concerns, and 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.' Heathrow insisted after the hearing that Mr Wicking was referring to matters which had 'no relation' to the North Hyde substation which caught fire. An airport source said: 'To draw a comparison between these incidents is irresponsible.' Mr Wicking said the shutdown cost airlines £60 million to £100 million. Heathrow is Europe's largest airport, with more than 83.9 million passengers travelling through its terminals in 2024. This was thought 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 that year, air travel was grounded across Europe because of an ash cloud caused by a volcanic eruption in Iceland.
The Herald Scotland
06-05-2025
- The Herald Scotland
Interim report into Heathrow power outage after fire to be published
This disrupted more than 270,000 air passenger journeys. Stranded passengers at Heathrow Terminal 5 (James Manning/PA) In the immediate aftermath of the fire, the National Energy System Operator was ordered by Energy Secretary Ed Miliband to investigate what happened and provide its initial findings within six weeks. The interim report will focus on 'establishing the timeline and sequence of events of the outage, explain the roles and responsibilities of the key stakeholders involved, and outline areas of further investigation required to deliver the final report by the end of June 2025', NESO said. Last month MPs were told Heathrow Airport had been warned about its power supply in the days before the incident. Nigel Wicking, chief executive of Heathrow Airline Operators Committee, which represents airlines that use the west London airport, said a 'couple of incidents' had made him concerned. He told the Transport Select Committee that he spoke to the Team Heathrow director on March 15 about his power concerns, and 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.' North Hyde electrical substation (Jonathan Brady/PA) Heathrow insisted after the hearing that Mr Wicking was referring to matters which had 'no relation' to the North Hyde substation which caught fire. An airport source said: 'To draw a comparison between these incidents is irresponsible.' Mr Wicking said the shutdown cost airlines £60 million to £100 million. Heathrow is Europe's largest airport, with more than 83.9 million passengers travelling through its terminals in 2024. This was thought 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 that year, air travel was grounded across Europe because of an ash cloud caused by a volcanic eruption in Iceland. The NESO North Hyde Review Interim Report will be published at 7am on Thursday.
Yahoo
06-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Interim report into Heathrow power outage after fire to be published
Interim report into Heathrow power outage after fire to be published An interim report into the power outage caused by a substation fire that shut Heathrow Airport will be published on Thursday. The airport was closed to all flights until about 6pm on Friday March 21 after a power outage caused by a fire at a nearby electricity substation, which started late the previous night. This disrupted more than 270,000 air passenger journeys. Stranded passengers at Heathrow Terminal 5 (James Manning/PA) In the immediate aftermath of the fire, the National Energy System Operator was ordered by Energy Secretary Ed Miliband to investigate what happened and provide its initial findings within six weeks. The interim report will focus on 'establishing the timeline and sequence of events of the outage, explain the roles and responsibilities of the key stakeholders involved, and outline areas of further investigation required to deliver the final report by the end of June 2025', NESO said. ADVERTISEMENT Last month MPs were told Heathrow Airport had been warned about its power supply in the days before the incident. Nigel Wicking, chief executive of Heathrow Airline Operators Committee, which represents airlines that use the west London airport, said a 'couple of incidents' had made him concerned. He told the Transport Select Committee that he spoke to the Team Heathrow director on March 15 about his power concerns, and 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.' North Hyde electrical substation (Jonathan Brady/PA) Heathrow insisted after the hearing that Mr Wicking was referring to matters which had 'no relation' to the North Hyde substation which caught fire. ADVERTISEMENT An airport source said: 'To draw a comparison between these incidents is irresponsible.' Mr Wicking said the shutdown cost airlines £60 million to £100 million. Heathrow is Europe's largest airport, with more than 83.9 million passengers travelling through its terminals in 2024. This was thought 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 that year, air travel was grounded across Europe because of an ash cloud caused by a volcanic eruption in Iceland. The NESO North Hyde Review Interim Report will be published at 7am on Thursday.
Rhyl Journal
06-05-2025
- Rhyl Journal
Interim report into Heathrow power outage after fire to be published
The airport was closed to all flights until about 6pm on Friday March 21 after a power outage caused by a fire at a nearby electricity substation, which started late the previous night. This disrupted more than 270,000 air passenger journeys. Stranded passengers at Heathrow Terminal 5 (James Manning/PA) In the immediate aftermath of the fire, the National Energy System Operator was ordered by Energy Secretary Ed Miliband to investigate what happened and provide its initial findings within six weeks. The interim report will focus on 'establishing the timeline and sequence of events of the outage, explain the roles and responsibilities of the key stakeholders involved, and outline areas of further investigation required to deliver the final report by the end of June 2025', NESO said. Last month MPs were told Heathrow Airport had been warned about its power supply in the days before the incident. Nigel Wicking, chief executive of Heathrow Airline Operators Committee, which represents airlines that use the west London airport, said a 'couple of incidents' had made him concerned. He told the Transport Select Committee that he spoke to the Team Heathrow director on March 15 about his power concerns, and 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.' North Hyde electrical substation (Jonathan Brady/PA) Heathrow insisted after the hearing that Mr Wicking was referring to matters which had 'no relation' to the North Hyde substation which caught fire. An airport source said: 'To draw a comparison between these incidents is irresponsible.' Mr Wicking said the shutdown cost airlines £60 million to £100 million. Heathrow is Europe's largest airport, with more than 83.9 million passengers travelling through its terminals in 2024. This was thought 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 that year, air travel was grounded across Europe because of an ash cloud caused by a volcanic eruption in Iceland. The NESO North Hyde Review Interim Report will be published at 7am on Thursday.
The Guardian
02-04-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Airlines warned Heathrow about power supply risks days before outage, MPs told
Airlines warned Heathrow about risks to its power supply days before the airport was shut down by a substation fire, a Commons committee was told. Heathrow boss Thomas Woldbye apologised for the disruption, which affected more than 200,000 passengers on Friday 21 March, but defended the decision to close as he said staying open was potentially 'disastrous'. Speaking to MPs on the Commons transport select committee, Woldbye said that such a power outage had been seen as a 'very low probability event' and the airport had paid for a 'supposedly resilient' supply. But Nigel Wicking, chief executive of Heathrow Airline Operators Committee, representing airlines, said that incidents including cable theft had made him concerned and he had spoken to senior airport officials. He told MPs that he had spoken to the Team Heathrow director a week before, and Heathrow's chief operating officer and chief customer officer on 19 March, just two days before the fire at the North Hyde substation closed the airport. He said the conversations came after 'a couple of incidents of, unfortunately, theft of wire and cable around some of the power supply' – which had on one occasion affected the lines on a runway. Wicking criticised Heathrow for the speed of making a decision to turn to its alternative power supplies and the length of time the process took – claiming that Terminal 5 could have been partly operating much earlier. But Woldbye said: 'It became quite clear we could not operate the airport safely quite early in this process, and that is why we closed the airport. 'If we had not done that, we would have had thousands of passengers stranded at the airport at high risk to personal injury … The risk of having literally tens of thousands of people stranded at the airport, where we have would have nowhere to put them, we could not process them, would have been a disastrous scenario.' He added: 'Just because the lights were on doesn't mean all the systems were working … We didn't have CCTV or fire surveillance.' Asked if more flights could have entered Heathrow without full power at the airport, he replied: 'We would be able to land aircraft … But we would then be leaving passengers on the runway which would not be acceptable.' Sign up to Business Today Get set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning after newsletter promotion But Wicking said that the decision to close the airport for 24 hours 'should have been constantly under review', and said more inbound flights could have been processed with manual systems, including immigration controls: 'We had checks in with Border Force during the day and they had resource and capability.' More details soon …
