Minister says she would have struggled to sleep if running Heathrow

Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said she would have struggled to sleep if she were running Heathrow airport during last week’s power outage.

She made the comment following a report that the airport’s chief executive went back to bed after the crisis began late on Thursday night.

The Sunday Times reported that this left one of Thomas Woldbye’s deputies, chief operating officer Javier Echave, to take key decisions while the electricity substation powering the airport burned.

Asked what she made of Mr Woldbye, Ms Alexander told LBC Radio: “I’ve had to deal with some pretty stressful situations in my time.

“I probably would struggle to sleep, to be honest.”

She added: “It’s my understanding that he placed his chief operating officer in charge.

“He will have also known that there was going to be a huge number of very difficult decisions the following day.

“I’m not going to justify decisions that Heathrow leadership did or didn’t take. I wasn’t sat at the table. I didn’t have the information that he had available to him at that time.”

Flights were halted after a fire knocked out an electricity substation in Hayes on Thursday night, and did not resume until Friday night.

In an interview with Sky News, Ms Alexander said she was told by Mr Woldbye the fire “created a very significant problem with respect to Terminals 2 and 4 specifically and that there had to be some reconfiguration of power supplies into the airport”.

John Pettigrew, chief executive of National Grid, said the airport had “enough power” from remaining substations.

He told the Financial Times: “There was no lack of capacity from the substations.

“Each substation individually can provide enough power to Heathrow.”

The chief executive of the electricity and gas utility company added: “Two substations were always available for the distribution network companies and Heathrow to take power.

“Losing a substation is a unique event but there were two others available.

“So that is a level of resilience.”

In response to the comments, a Heathrow Airport spokesperson said: “As the National Grid’s chief executive, John Pettigrew, noted, he has never seen a transformer failure like this in his 30 years in the industry.

“His view confirms that this was an unprecedented incident and that it would not have been possible for Heathrow to operate uninterrupted.

“Hundreds of critical systems across the airport were required to be safely powered down and then safely and systematically rebooted. Given Heathrow’s size and operational complexity, safely restarting operations after a disruption of this magnitude was a significant challenge.”

Mr Woldbye had said a back-up transformer failed during the power outage, meaning systems had to be closed in accordance with safety procedures so power supplies could be restructured from two remaining substations.

A report by consultancy firm Jacobs more than 10 years ago found a “key weakness” of Heathrow’s electricity supply was “main transmission line connections to the airport”.

The document, published in 2014, stated “outages could cause disruption to passenger, baggage and aircraft handling functions”, and “could require closure of areas of affected terminals or potentially the entire airport”.

In its appraisal of operational risk at the airport, Jacobs said provision of on-site generation and other measures to ensure resilient supply appeared “to be adequate” to enable Heathrow “to withstand and recover from interruptions to supply”.

It added that the airport operated “within risk parameters that are not excessive or unusual for an airport of its type”.

Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has ordered the National Energy System Operator to “urgently investigate” the power outage caused by the substation fire, and is working with Ofgem and using powers under the Energy Act to formally launch the grid operator’s investigation.

The National Energy System Operator (Neso) is expected to report to the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and Ofgem with initial findings within six weeks.

Counter-terrorism officers from the Metropolitan Police initially led the investigation, but the force said the fire is not believed to be suspicious so London Fire Brigade is now leading the probe which will focus on the electrical distribution equipment.

Meanwhile, an internal review of the airport’s crisis management plans and its response to Friday’s power outage will be undertaken by former transport secretary Ruth Kelly, who is an independent member of Heathrow’s board.

Heathrow said it was “open and fully operational” over the weekend.

British Airways said it ran a “near-full schedule” on Sunday and passengers should go to the west London airport as normal unless told otherwise.

Heathrow is Europe’s largest airport, with more than 83.9 million passengers travelling through its terminals in 2024.

Around 200,000 passengers were affected by Friday’s closure.