The chief executive of Heathrow had a sleep-in as thousands of passengers woke up to the news that Europe’s busiest airport had grounded all flights after a fire at a nearby electricity substation had taken out critical safety systems, including runway lights.
In the late evening of March 20, a large fire at a high-voltage electricity substation plunged Heathrow Airport into darkness, and 90 minutes after electricity was first lost, the airport’s chief operating officer made the decision to shut down the airport altogether.
More than 200,000 passengers faced massive disruptions as a result of the shutdown, including thousands of passengers who were already on planes flying to Heathrow that were forced to divert to other airports across the UK and Europe.
But as the true scale of the debacle started to dawn on much of Britain, chief executive Thomas Woldbye was still asleep and didn’t learn of the shutdown until approximately 6:45 am on March 21 despite multiple attempts to contact him overnight.
An internal inquiry into the calamity found that an alert was first sent to Woldbye’s mobile phone at 00:21 am, notifying him that a major incident was underway and that a special command and control process was underway–known as an F24 alarm.
A second F24 alarm was sent to Woldbye’s phone at 1:52 am, but he missed both alerts because his phone had been switched to silent.
Chief Operating Officer Javier Echave also tried to call Woldbye’s several times during the night, but these calls went unanswered despite the fact that his phone was just inches away from him on his bedside table.
When Woldbye eventually woke up, he received a debrief from Echave, who had taken the decision to shutter Heathrow for the entire day.
Some British media reports had initially claimed that Woldbye was aware of what was going on at his airport but decided to appoint control to Echave before heading to bed. In fact, he wasn’t aware that a fire had closed down Heathrow until nearly seven hours after the decision had been made.
The inquiry, known as the Kelly Review, was commissioned by Heathrow shortly after the fire. It was headed by the former Secretary of State for Transport, Ruth Kelly, and largely backed Heathrow’s decision to close down.
In the end, the airport partially reopened on the afternoon of March 21, first with empty positioning flights from 4 pm, followed by the repatriation of passengers that had been diverted to other airports from 6 pm.
By 8 pm, a small number of outbound flights with passengers were allowed to depart, and by March 22, operations were largely back to normal.
The inquiry looked at whether flights at Terminal 3 and Terminal 5 could have been allowed to continue through March 21, given that they had not lost power in the same way as Terminal 2 and Terminal 4.
The report concluded, however, that ‘critical safety systems’ that have been kept secret were still not working in Terminal 3 or Terminal 5.
“The evidence confirms that Heathrow made the right decisions in exceptionally difficult circumstances,” commented Kelly after the report was published on Wednesday. “Whilst the disruption was significant, alternative choices on the day would not have materially changed the outcome.”
Kelly added: “The airport had contingency plans in place, and the report highlights that further planned investment in energy resilience will be key to reducing the impact of any similar events in the future.”
Matt’s take – Let’s compare with Spain following their national power outage
When Spain (along with Portugal) suffered massive power outages on April 28, including in the Spanish capital, Madrid, flights continued to operate at Adolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport throughout.
The airport did, however, warn that some flights would have to be canceled because the pilots and flight attendants rostered to work these flights couldn’t make it to the airport as subways were down and traffic was snarled across the city.
Nobody thought to go to where he lives and knock on the door?