Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said she was not going to ‘prejudge’ any investigations but when asked if she had confidence in the Heathrow Airport’s senior staff
Heidi Alexander on claims that Heathrow could have stayed open
The Transport Secretary has refused to give her full backing to Heathrow bosses amid swirling criticism over the handling of a fire at a power generator on Friday.
Heidi Alexander said she was not going to “prejudge” any investigations but when asked if she had confidence in the airport’s senior staff, she dodged the question and said it was not a matter for her. Elsewhere she appeared to take aim at Heathrow boss Thomas Woldbye for going to bed as the fire raged on – saying that she would have struggled to sleep if she was running the airport.
She was also confronted about the head of the National Grid John Pettigrew’s comments that Heathrow Airport had “enough power” despite the shutdown. She defended that Heathrow bosses were forced to close the airport because they needed to reboot systems after switching to a different power supply.
READ MORE: Heathrow Airport slams National Grid boss who claims it had ‘enough power’ despite shutdown
Mr John Pettigrew last night told the Financial Times that two electricity substations were “always available for the distribution network companies and Heathrow to take power”. “There was no lack of capacity from the substations,” he said. “Each substation individually can provide enough power to Heathrow.”
Heathrow chief executive Mr Woldbye has faced anger from airlines over the highly disruptive airport shutdown, which resulted in at least 1,300 flights being cancelled. He has been criticised for going back to bed to make sure he was “well rested” and leaving his deputy to deal with the incident throughout the night.
Asked about the criticism, Ms Alexander admitted she “probably would struggle to sleep to be honest”, adding: “I’m not going to justify decisions that Heathrow leadership did or didn’t take. I wasn’t sat at the table. I didn’t have the information that he had available to him at that time.”
She refused to say she had “full confidence” in Heathrow’s senior leader. Instead, when asked, she said: “That’s not a matter for me. The individuals who need to ask themselves whether they have full confidence in Heathrow management are the Heathrow board.”
And pressed on Mr Pettigrew’s comments, Ms Alexander said: “I spoke to the Chief Executive of Heathrow myself on Friday morning. He explained to me that whilst there are multiple power supplies into Heathrow, the fire at the substation meant that the power in terminals two and four was out. They had to reconfigure the power supply. They did have backup power facilities, diesel generators, electricity generators, but those backup systems are only designed to protect the critical key infrastructure in the airport, not to power the entire airport.”
In response to the comments, a Heathrow Airport spokesperson said: “As the National Grid’s chief executive, John Pettigrew, noted, he has never seen a transformer failure like this in his 30 years in the industry. His view confirms that this was an unprecedented incident and that it would not have been possible for Heathrow to operate uninterrupted.
“Hundreds of critical systems across the airport were required to be safely powered down and then safely and systematically rebooted. Given Heathrow’s size and operational complexity, safely restarting operations after a disruption of this magnitude was a significant challenge.”
Mr Woldbye had said a back-up transformer failed during the power outage, meaning systems had to be closed in accordance with safety procedures so power supplies could be restructured from two remaining substations. A report by consultancy firm Jacobs more than 10 years ago found a “key weakness” of Heathrow’s electricity supply was “main transmission line connections to the airport”. The document, published in 2014, stated “outages could cause disruption to passenger, baggage and aircraft handling functions”, and “could require closure of areas of affected terminals or potentially the entire airport”.
Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has ordered the National Energy System Operator to “urgently investigate” the power outage caused by the substation fire, and is working with Ofgem and using powers under the Energy Act to formally launch the grid operator’s investigation.
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