Heathrow Airport, one of Europe’s busiest travel hubs, was thrown into turmoil on Friday when a fire broke out at an electrical substation, leading to the cancellation or diversion of over 1,000 flights. The blaze severely impacted operations at Britain’s largest airport, effectively shutting it down and raising concerns over the airport's infrastructure resilience.
Thomas Woldbye, Heathrow's chief executive, described the operational chaos as "unprecedented," revealing that the airport experienced a power loss equivalent to that of a midsize city. Although a backup transformer functioned correctly, it was inadequate to restore power to the entire facility. Woldbye noted that they anticipated a full return to regular operations by Saturday.
In light of the incident, British authorities have tasked counterterrorism police with investigating the fire, which occurred at a substation in North Hyde, northeast of the airport. However, the Metropolitan Police later stated that, following an initial assessment, they did not consider the incident to be suspicious, even as inquiries continue.
While it is still early to determine the financial implications of the outage, the incident has sparked significant questions about the airport's dependence on a single electrical substation and its overall resilience to such interruptions.
