The Guardian
Julia Kollewe
24 March 2025
A fire at a nearby electricity substation caused chaos on Friday as the airport was shut, with more than 200,000 passengers around the world affected.
The head of National Grid, said on Sunday that there was enough power for Heathrow to remain open during the entire period it was shut down on Friday, with electricity provided by two other substations.
But a spokesperson for the airport said on Monday: “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.”
