Britain’s Heathrow Airport defended its decision to shut down operations at Europe’s busiest airport following an 18-hour closure that cost airlines tens of millions of pounds and stranded thousands of passengers. Questions arose over how such a critical part of Britain’s infrastructure could fail and whether all four terminals needed to shut. Both National Grid and Heathrow agreed that the transformer failure was unprecedented. However, Heathrow was forced to defend its closure after National Grid’s CEO stated that the electricity transmission network remained capable of providing power throughout the crisis. Heathrow explained that a fire at a nearby substation interrupted operations, requiring a system reconfiguration and switch to an alternative substation. A spokesperson noted that hundreds of critical systems had to be safely powered down and rebooted systematically. John Pettigrew, CEO of National Grid, confirmed two other substations were available to provide power, showcasing grid resilience. While airlines like British Airways calculate losses, the government and Heathrow have commissioned reviews into the incident. Transport Minister Heidi Alexander emphasized the importance of learning from the event and awaited review results before commenting on confidence in Heathrow’s CEO Thomas Woldbye. Heathrow is privately owned by French investment group Ardian, Qatar Investment Authority, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, and others. — news from CNN
