British government wants rigorous probe into Heathrow’s 18-hour power shutdown
By Rob Harris
London: Heathrow Airport has resumed some flights after a power outage that upended journeys for 200,000 thousand passengers on Friday, but the British government says “clearly there are questions to answer” about how a single fire could shut down Europe’s busiest airport.
A spokesperson for Prime Minister Keir Starmer said there must be a rigorous investigation into the incident to make sure “this scale of disruption does not happen again.”
Authorities are looking into how a fire at a power station could shut down the world’s fifth-busiest airport.Credit: AP/file
The 18-hour outage was caused by a fire at an electrical substation supplying the airport, one of the busiest in the world for international traffic. Police said while there was no evidence at this stage of foul play, counter-terrorism officers would lead a probe because of the incident’s impact on critical infrastructure.
London’s Metropolitan Police said all possible lines of inquiry were being pursued. London Fire Brigade said the blaze at the North Hyde substation was “believed to be non-suspicious”.
Even though some flights have resumed, the airport said it expected significant disruption for days. As of on Friday evening (Saturday AEDT), British Airways and Virgin Atlantic started flying empty planes into the airport to ease the backlog.
A fire is seen at the North Hyde electrical substation near the Heathrow Airport in London, early on Friday.Credit: Matthew Muirhead via AP
About 120 aircraft were en route to Heathrow when the fire broke out, according to aircraft tracking specialist Flightradar24. Those flights were diverted. At least 1350 flights to and from the airport were affected.
More than 400 passengers on board Qantas flights from Singapore and Perth were diverted to Paris before taking buses to London in a 32-hour haul, the airline said.
Mag Leahy told the London Telegraph she and other passengers were forced to take a coach through the Channel Tunnel and finally arrived at Heathrow on Friday evening.
“Qantas staff at [Heathrow] Terminal 5 were lovely, handing out water and food,” she told the newspaper. “A bit late in the day for it, really, considering we landed in Paris at 5am.”
Joshua Richardson, who was on the flight from Perth, told The Times he arrived at Heathrow after travelling more than 32 hours and still needed to get to Oxford.
“We first found out because the in-flight entertainment changed from Heathrow to Paris, and people were like, ‘What’s going on?’” he said.
“The pilot said Heathrow had lost power — the only place we could divert was Paris. We had to circle Paris for a bit, and you could see other planes circling, too. There’s going to be some stories of people being messed up by this, so I won’t complain. All I am is tired and cranky.”
Flights at Heathrow Airport are resuming sooner than expected after a fire at an electricity substation.Credit: Getty Images
Heathrow Airport’s chief executive, Thomas Woldbye, apologised for the disruption but defended its response to the incident, saying “this is as big as it gets for our airport”. He admitted to reporters outside the airport that Heathrow’s power was “a bit of a weak point”.
British media reported airline chiefs had accused the airport of “clear failure”. The Telegraph quoted former defence secretary Gavin Williamson, a Conservative, as saying: “This is a colossal failure of Heathrow Airport. They have failed to build in the resilience that is required to ensure this level of disruption does not happen.”
Workers are seen as smoke rises from the North Hyde electrical substation, which caught fire.Credit: AP
The publication said expansion plans by the consortium that owns the facility, including for a dedicated power station, have been delayed for a decade.
The disruption fell short of the that caused by the 2010 eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano, which spewed clouds of ash into the atmosphere and created trans-Atlantic air travel chaos for months.
“I’d like to stress that this has been an incident of major severity. It’s not a small fire,” he said.
Woldbye said the airport expected to return to “100 per cent operation” on Saturday after an “unprecedented” day of disruption, telling reporters that passengers should come to the airport as they normally would and not earlier.
Heathrow had its busiest January on record earlier this year, with more than 6.3 million passengers, up more than 5 per cent from the same period last year.
It is usually closed to all flights except for emergency diversions between 10.55pm and 6am daily, with a strictly limited number of arrivals scheduled from 4.45am onwards.
The British government temporarily lifted restrictions on overnight flights to help clear the backlog.
with AP
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