UK launches investigation into power outages at Heathrow Airport

The British government ordered an urgent investigation into how a fire at the power system left London's Heathrow Airport in the dark on Friday, crippling one of the busiest airport in the world.

“We are determined to properly understand what happened and what lessons we need to learn,” UK energy secretary Ed Miliband said in a statement later Saturday.

The closure on Friday destroyed more than 1,000 flights, displaced planes and air crews from position and allowed them to track passengers overseeing passengers.

The fire, which authorities consider to be a coincidence, raised questions about the resilience of the UK's major infrastructure and whether the country has invested enough to maintain it. However, some experts said that power outages are probably inevitable given the scale of the flames at the substation.

The UK government has faced pressure for many years to maintain and modernize the country's transportation infrastructure, including roads and trains. However, the country faces severe financial pressures, and public services like healthcare are underfunded. The demand for additional major infrastructure spending creates a political headache for Prime Minister Kiel's priority, but he also tries to increase military spending as it flattens economic growth.

Within hours of the airport getting dark, engineering experts were questioning whether Heathrow was supported by the infrastructure worthy of a major global hub.

Martin Kubal, a professor of physics at the University of Bristol, wrote in an online post that the fire is a warning sign for the country's electrical systems.

“Unfortunately, there is no resilience built into the national grid,” Kuball, Royal Engineering Chair for Emerging Technology, writes at Science Media Center. “In part, this is because it relies not on newer technology using copper windings, but on older technology in substations that distribute so-called solid-state transformers.”

The fire struck one of three substations that convert electricity into heathrows and distribute it. “We have other substations, but switching between them takes time,” Heathrow CEO Thomas Waldy told the BBC.

The airport has diesel generators and batteries to power critical safety systems such as runway lights. However, airport officials say these emergency backups cannot provide power to the entire airport.

So the airport has effectively become darker and some experts said that, given the same circumstances, the airport faced the same outcome.

Simon Gallagher, managing director at UK Networks Services, advised clients on the resilience of their power networks, saying most airports do not have the backup capacity to run the entire operation after being disconnected from the grid.

He said they need at least 20 diesel generators that produce megawatts of electricity, each of which is 40 feet in size of a transport container. That setup would provide about six hours of power before refueling is required, he said.

A 2023 report by the US Government Accountability Office found that 24 US airports had experienced more than five minutes of unplanned suspensions between 2015 and 2022, in 321 unplanned suspensions.

The 2017 blackout destroyed operations at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, the busiest airport in the world, cancelling more than 1,000 flights. The terminal at Kennedy International Airport was closed for a day due to a 2023 suspension due to an electrical panel failure.

British authorities said they are hoping for preliminary results from the investigation in six weeks.

Heathrow said it will operate a full schedule of more than 1,300 flights on Sunday as the airline attempted to clear a backlog that disrupted travel for tens of thousands of people. More than 250,000 passengers passed the airport “punctually” on Saturday, the airport said.

In a statement, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said that Heathrow “uses small cities' energy, so it is essential to identify how this blackout occurred, learn from it, and ensure that it is important for us to ensure that the national infrastructure is important.”