UK ministers launch investigation into blaze that shut Heathrow

UK ministers have launched an investigation into the fire at an electrical substation that forced Heathrow airport to close, as airlines warned of further disruption to passengers even as they began flying again.

Energy Secretary Ed Miliband on Saturday told the National Energy System Operator, the public body responsible for the electricity grid, to “urgently” investigate how a single fire caused such a big disruption.

He said he also wanted “to understand any wider lessons “on energy resilience for critical national infrastructure”.

Heathrow was closed in the early hours of Friday after a fire at an electricity substation in west London caused a power outage at the airport.

It fully reopened on Saturday morning and Thomas Woldbye, Heathrow’s chief executive, defended the airport’s contingency planning and said he was proud of its response to the electrical outage.

But airlines had cancelled about 100 of flights by late afternoon as they faced the logistical challenge of restarting their operations with planes, crews and passengers out of place and scattered across the world.

Some airline executives were privately frustrated at the airport’s messages that it had fully recovered, given that they were still cancelling flights and dealing with stranded passengers.

British Airways, by far the largest airline operator at Heathrow, said it expected to cancel about 15 per cent of its schedule to and from Heathrow on Saturday, which would be about 90 flights.

The airport and National Grid both face scrutiny over how the failure of one substation could lead to Heathrow’s closure for nearly 24 hours.

The airport draws power from three local substations, but said it was forced to close in order to reset its electrical supply and computer systems after the fire at one of them caused it to fail.

Akshay Kaul, director-general for infrastructure at energy regulator Ofgem, said households and businesses “should be able to have confidence in the resilience of critical national infrastructure”.

Heathrow and the government were warned 10 years ago in an external report that a “key weakness” in the airport’s utility infrastructure was “the main transmission line connections to the airport”.

The 2014 report by consultancy Jacobs, prepared as part of an earlier expansion push, said “even a brief interruption to electricity supplies could have a long-lasting impact”.

But it concluded that “Heathrow is equipped with on-site generation and appears to have resilient electricity supplies that are compliant with regulations and standards”.

Willie Walsh, the former boss of BA and a long-standing critic of Heathrow, said there had been a “clear planning failure” by the airport.

Woldbye said the airport’s backup power supplies for its critical functions including the runway lights and control tower had kicked in, but that these were not designed to power the entire airport.

“We would need a separate standby power plant on the site . . . I don’t know of an airport that has that,” he told the BBC.

“We will of course look into this and say can we learn from this, do we need a different level of resilience if we cannot trust that the grid around us is working the way it should.”

National Grid on Saturday said it was taking steps to improve resilience on its network.

The FTSE 100 company owns and operates the North Hyde substation in Hayes, west London, that caught fire late on Thursday night.

The cause of the fire is still being investigated but National Grid said power had been restored to all customers.

“We are now implementing measures to help further improve the resilience levels of our network,” it said.

At Heathrow on Saturday, passengers noted minimal disruption.

Dana Pane, a passenger flying home to Bologna, had arrived at the airport six hours early “just in case” of disruption, but had not seen any.

Heather Moore, who landed at Heathrow just after 7am from Vietnam, said she had seen the news on Friday and feared her flight would be cancelled.

“[But] everything has been fine in the end,” she said. 

About 1,300 flights were cancelled on Friday and flights already in the air were either turned around to their original airport or diverted to other hubs around Europe.

That has left airlines facing a big challenge as they restart their schedules: many of their planes, pilots and cabin crew are in the wrong places, while many staff will also be unable to work because of strict rules on rest between flights.

“All these long-haul aircraft — particularly BA’s — have ended up at airports they were never supposed to be at. If there are no crews there to pick them up, then airlines will struggle to get their aircraft moving again as normal,” said John Strickland, an aviation consultant.

“Every additional day is extra cancellations running into the days ahead. It’s a domino effect.”

London’s Metropolitan Police’s counterterrorism command continued to lead enquiries into the fire at the substation, but on Friday evening the Met said they were not treating the incident as suspicious.