LONDON (Reuters) -London’s Heathrow Airport responded well to a major power outage in March that forced Europe’s busiest hub to shut down for almost a day, a review commissioned by the airport concluded on Wednesday.
The March 21 closure of Heathrow cost airlines tens of millions of pounds and stranded hundreds of thousands of passengers. It also raised questions about the resilience of Britain’s infrastructure.
“The evidence confirms that Heathrow made the right decisions in exceptionally difficult circumstances. Whilst the disruption was significant, alternative choices on the day would not have materially changed the outcome,” said the review’s author, former transport minister Ruth Kelly.
“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.”
The cause of a fire at a nearby electricity substation that forced Heathrow’s closure remains unknown, a separate report published earlier this month by the National Energy System Operator said. Police have said the fire was not suspicious.
The outage prompted scrutiny from the government, airlines and passengers, who asked why all of Heathrow’s terminals had to shut and why it took 18 hours for power to be restored.
The review made 28 recommendations, including to foster better understanding between the airport and power distributor SSEN, improve the monitoring of critical safety systems and assess whether additional back-up generators could improve resilience.
(Reporting by Sachin Ravikumar; editing by William James)
