Last week London’s Heathrow Airport experienced a severe shutdown that extended beyond a full day. This dramatic disruption after a fire knocked out critical runway lights for weeks. The resulting incident required the diversion of 120 aircraft and severely delayed travel for almost 300,000 passengers. Concerns about the airport’s power supply had been raised days prior to the incident by Nigel Wicking, the head of the Heathrow Airline Operators’ Committee.
On 15 March, Wicking expressed his concerns about the robustness of Heathrow’s power supply to Team Heathrow’s director. This was then followed by a day of deep discussion with the chief operating officer and chief customer officer on March 19. The airport relies on three substations for its power supply, and the failure of one substation created a safety situation that led to the airport’s shutdown.
Wicking highlighted the gravity of the situation, stating, “This was not a light decision to be made in any context.” He said that the shutdown got serious enough to require taking action. Wicking cautioned against downplaying the possible effects of the po … If we had got this wrong, we’d be having a much different conversation today about why people were hurt,” he said.
When an uncontrolled fire was initially reported as the cause of a temporary loss of runway lights, the eyebrow-raising lack of passenger safety became increasingly clear. Wicking pointed out that these lights are critical to airport operations during inclement weather. He pointed to increased theft crimes, particularly related to wire and cable in certain territories that he oversees. This only amplifies vulnerabilities that are potentially catastrophic enough to ground airport operations.
“Aircraft were then going to Europe, and then some were even halfway across Europe and going back to base in India,” explained Thomas Woldbye, CEO of Heathrow. The disruption was so drastic as to create a runaway backlog of redirected flights. Woldbye acknowledged that “they’d run out of space within the UK for aircraft to divert,” illustrating the logistical challenges faced by airlines due to the shutdown.
Beyond the direct impacts on runway operations, Terminal 2– which was specifically hit by the power outage—had an especially chaotic weekend. Multiple adjacent central systems failed, resulting in massive cancellations and chaos across the Passenger Rail realm. “So, quite a level of disruption for those passengers, let alone all of the cancellations,” Woldbye added.
Heathrow’s management faced criticism over the incident, especially given its status as “the most expensive airport in the world, with regard passenger charges,” according to Wicking. He contended that these costs must be reflected in a commitment to first-class service and infrastructure assurance.
Woldbye further expressed his regret to the thousands of affected passengers, admitting that the disruption has understandably been a source of distress. “We were losing power to the airport. In our operations centre you would have seen all the red lights go, that the systems were powering down,” he said. Critics have called for extensive investigations into the airport’s infrastructure and security measures protecting its only power supply.