The UK’s largest airport decided to stop operations in the early hours of Friday soon after the blaze at an electrical substation started around midnight north of Heathrow.
The row around the airport’s decision to close raged over the weekend. The National Grid’s chief executive John Pettigrew told the Financial Times that while a fire knocking out a substation was a “unique event”, there were two other substations that remained operational and capable of powering the airport in west London.
Speaking to the BBC on Friday (21 March), Heathrow chief executive Thomas Woldbye apologised to passengers whose travel plans were affected by the fire before insisting the airport would “support every effort to understand the causes and impacts of [Friday’s] off-airport incident”.
“We are committed to working closely with all stakeholders to ensure a thorough investigation to help strengthen the airport’s future resilience,” he added.
More than 1,000 flights were axed worldwide as Heathrow fought to restore power across its terminals.
Agents worked around the clock to save clients’ trips during the Heathrow power outage
The airport added 50 slots into its schedule to enable 10,000 more passengers to travel on Saturday when flight operations started to resume.
On Monday (24 March), Heathrow confirmed it is operating a full schedule with more than 1,300 flights planned after operations started to resume on Saturday. “Our ongoing priority remains serving our passengers and getting them safely and quickly away on their journeys,” the airport said.
Transport secretary Heidi Alexander encouraged passengers flying to or from Heathrow to check with their airline before departure.
https://twitter.com/HeathrowAirport/status/1904053505285083430
She stressed it is “imperative we identify how this power failure happened and learn from this to ensure a vital piece of national infrastructure remains strong”.
“This incident caused significant disruption but Heathrow, National Grid, and our emergency services have worked swiftly to get people travelling again,” added Alexander.
“While Heathrow is back to business, some disruption is expected over coming days as things get back to normal so I encourage anyone travelling to check with their airlines and plan their journeys.”
Travel Village Group chief executive Phil Nuttall, meanwhile, accused hotels of “milking” the Heathrow power outage by increasing prices, in some cases, 500%.
“It’s not palatable,” he told TTG. “If you’ve got a rock concert in town hotel prices would go up 100% but here we’re seeing 500%.
“We’re in the leisure industry. We work together. We supply together, how can it be right to monetise this? I’m not being naïve.”
