Heathrow boss: better power supply to avoid outage repeat could cost GBP1b

The CE of Heathrow has said it could cost about £1bn to install a more resilient power supply system to prevent a repeat of the outage that shut Europe’s busiest airport last week, and that airlines could pay higher charges to help fund it. Thomas Woldbye, who has been criticised for going to bed on the night of the crisis so he could be “better rested” to handle the fallout the following day, has said he was frustrated the incident occurred and would like to have handled it better. The disruption last Friday, caused by a fire at a nearby electricity substation, led to the cancellation of 1,300 flights and affected more than 200,000 passengers around the world. John Pettigrew, the CE of National Grid, has claimed there was enough power available from two other substations near Heathrow to have allowed it to remain open during the shutdown period. Woldbye maintains the airport had no choice but to close on safety grounds but suggested it might have been able to switch over its systems more quickly and reopened sooner. “It’s a relevant question,” he told the Financial Times. “And I’ll start out by saying that, you know, we don’t profess to be 100% perfect.” Heathrow took 24 hours to fully reopen after engineers reconfigured power supplies and tested that all its critical safety systems were working properly. “I really regret this happened on my watch,” Woldbye said. “This is not something I take lightly. I am truly frustrated about what happened, and of course I would like to have done it better. Having lost a day in the airport’s history is not something we are overall proud of or happy with.” Woldbye, who left the COO, Javier Echave, in charge on the night of the substation fire, said Heathrow was assessing whether it was possible to install a “fully resilient” power system that would allow it to switch between sources more swiftly.<br/>