PM ‘deeply concerned’ about Heathrow closure
Some 200,000 passengers were affected as the west London airport was closed for much of Friday after a fire at a nearby electricity substation.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has said he is “deeply concerned” about last week’s Heathrow shutdown.
The west London airport was closed to all flights on Friday until around 6pm after a fire at a nearby electricity substation on Thursday night.
Around 200,000 passengers were disrupted.
Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has ordered the National Energy System Operator to investigate what happened and provide its initial findings within six weeks.
Sir Keir told the BBC: “I’m deeply concerned about what happened on Friday, I think anybody would be.
“Clearly there are questions that need to be answered in relation to what happened on Friday.
“There’s an internal review but the Secretary of State has also ordered an investigation so that we can get to the bottom of this.
“But am I concerned about it? Yes, I am. Do I think there are questions to answer? Yes, I do. That’s why we’ve put this investigation in place.
“I don’t want to see an airport as important as Heathrow going down in the way it did on Friday, so I’m not comfortable with that for one second.”
Heathrow is Europe’s largest airport, with more than 83.9 million passengers travelling through its terminals in 2024.
An internal review of the airport’s crisis management plans and its response will be undertaken by former transport secretary Ruth Kelly, who is an independent member of Heathrow’s board.
Current Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said she would have struggled to sleep if she were running Heathrow during the crisis.
She made the comment following a report that the airport’s chief executive went back to bed after the power outage began.
The Sunday Times reported 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.”
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.
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.
Heathrow said it was “open and fully operational” over the weekend.
