Could the closure of the London airport have been avoided? On March 21, Heathrow, one of the largest airports in the world, had closed all day due to an electricity failure caused by a fire in the Hayes electrical transformation station, in the western suburbs of London, which serves the airport.
Nigel Wicking, managing director of the Heathrow Air Operator Committee, which represents the airlines, said on Wednesday during a hearing in the British Parliament that he shared his concerns about this transformation position with several airport directors a few days before.
“It was after a few incidents, unfortunately, theft of wires and cables around the power supply that, in one of these cases, the lights of the track were extinguished for a certain time,” he said before the deputies of the Transport Commission. “It obviously worried me, so I raised the fact that I wanted to better understand the overall resilience of the airport,” he added.
Nigel Wicking says that he spoke to the director of Team Heathrow, a group encompassing all companies and staff working at the airport on March 15, then with the operations chief and the customer manager on March 19.
A forced closure
The airport closure has raised many questions about its dependence on the Hayes transformation post. Three days after this closure, the owner of the operator of the national electricity network Grid said that Heathrow could have continued to be supplied and stayed open.
Heathrow Managing Director Thomas Woldbye said before the transport committee on Wednesday that it would have been “disastrous” to maintain open airport. “It has become obvious that we could not use the airport safely from the start of this process, and that is why we closed the airport,” he said. “If we had not done it, thousands of passengers would have remained blocked at the airport, with a high risk of bodily damage,” he added.
The closure of Heathrow has caused chain disturbances in world air transport. More than 200,000 passengers have seen their flight canceled or reroused.