Heathrow Airport power outage – Transport Committee

Could Heathrow power cut have been dealt with differently?

The near-24 hour shut down of Heathrow Airport on 21 March forced around 1,400 flights to be cancelled or diverted and over 200,000 passengers to be displaced. The Transport Committee will now examine whether it could have all been dealt with differently, and what lessons can be learnt.

MPs will question CEO Thomas Woldbye on the operational factors and decisions that led to Europe’s biggest airport closing for as long as it did, and how the vital piece of infrastructure appeared to have a single point of failure.

There will be questions on whether alternative power sources could have been used earlier, after the National Grid suggested two other substations could have powered the entire airport. Instead, a number of diesel back-up generators fuelled only safety-critical functions. The National Grid will be represented at the session by Alice Delahunty, President of its UK electricity transmission operations. Also giving evidence will be Eliane Algaard, Operations Director of the company responsible for the substation that caught fire, Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks.

The cross-party Committee will ask whether Heathrow Airport Ltd fully realised the risks of this type of system failure happening, and whether this type of incident was deemed so unlikely to happen that investing in additional resilience was deemed unnecessary.

The Committee will also be interested to hear how Heathrow coordinated with other airports in the UK and Europe to accommodate diverted flights, how the company engaged with dozens of airlines that were affected, and how customers and stakeholders will be compensated. Also on the panel will be Nigel Wicking of the Heathrow Airline Operators Committee which represents airlines that operate at the airport.