Heathrow Power Outage Sparks Investigation Into Infrastructure Resilience

The British government has launched an urgent investigation after a fire at an electricity substation left Heathrow Airport in darkness on Friday, disrupting one of the world’s busiest travel hubs.

The incident, which led to the cancellation of over 1,300 flights and stranded thousands of passengers, has raised concerns about the resilience of the UK’s critical infrastructure.

Energy Secretary Ed Miliband emphasized the need to understand what happened and identify lessons for the future.

“We are determined to properly understand what happened and what lessons need to be learned,” he said in a statement on Saturday.

The fire, which authorities believe was accidental, affected one of three substations supplying power to Heathrow. Although two other substations remained operational, the airport struggled to restore power quickly. Heathrow’s Chief Executive Thomas Woldbye explained that switching power sources required reconfiguring internal electrical systems, which delayed recovery.

John Pettigrew, Chief Executive of the National Grid, disputed Heathrow’s response, stating that the airport could have drawn power from the remaining substations.

“There was no lack of capacity from the substations,” he told the Financial Times. “Each substation individually can provide enough power to Heathrow.”

The disruption has sparked debate over whether Heathrow’s backup power systems were sufficient. While the airport has diesel generators and batteries for critical safety functions like runway lights, they cannot support full airport operations. Experts say that most airports worldwide would face similar challenges if entirely cut off from the grid.

Simon Gallagher, Managing Director at UK Networks Services, noted that keeping an airport fully operational without grid power would require at least 20 large diesel generators, each producing a megawatt of electricity.

“That setup would provide power for about six hours before needing to be refueled,” he said.

The incident has renewed scrutiny of Britain’s energy security and infrastructure resilience. Heathrow had been warned a decade ago about its reliance on a limited number of power sources. Some critics argue that the UK’s aging electrical infrastructure and slow modernization efforts leave key transport hubs vulnerable to similar failures.

Similar power failures have affected other major airports. In 2017, an outage at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport caused over 1,000 flight cancellations. A 2023 electrical failure at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport shut down a terminal for a day. In the UK, an analysis by The Telegraph found that over a third of UK airports have suffered power cuts since 2013, affecting tens of thousands of passengers.

The British authorities expect preliminary findings from the investigation within six weeks. Heathrow resumed full operations on Sunday, handling over 1,300 flights and working to clear the backlog of stranded passengers.

Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander stressed the importance of strengthening infrastructure resilience.

“Heathrow uses the energy of a small city, so it’s imperative we identify how this power failure happened and learn from this to ensure a vital piece of national infrastructure remains strong,” she said.

With input from the New York Times, the Financial Times, and the Telegraph.