Ministers have ordered an urgent probe into the substation fire which forced Heathrow airport to close for 15 hours on Friday – as experts claimed the remarkable meltdown had “embarrassed” Britain on the global stage.
The travel plans of up to 300,000 passengers were cast into disarray on Friday after the blaze at a single west London substation grounded more than 1,300 flights between Europe’s busiest airport and locations across the globe.
While the airport declared itself “fully operational” once again on Saturday – with hundreds of extra airport staff rallied to facilitate an additional 10,000 passengers travelling through Heathrow – more than 100 flights were cancelled, including those travelling to New York and arriving from Dubai. Heathrow would typically expect to facilitate 600 flights on Saturday.
After counter-terrorism officers were initially called in to lead the investigation into the fire, police confirmed on Saturday that the blaze was believed to be non-suspicious and said the London Fire Brigade would instead lead a probe focusing on electrical distribution equipment.
Criticism of the situation has since intensified, with Labour peer Toby Harris – who leads the National Preparedness Commission, which campaigns to improve resilience – saying: “It’s a huge embarrassment for the country that a fire in one electricity substation can have such a devastating effect.”
Jason Bona, owner of supply chain firm PS Forwarding, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme the incident made Heathrow a “laughing stock” in the global freight community.
“It is a clear planning failure by the airport,” said Willie Walsh, a former British Airways chief who now leads the global airline body IATA and has long been a fierce critic of Heathrow.
Vowing that the government “is determined to do everything it can to prevent a repeat of what happened at Heathrow”, energy secretary Ed Miliband said on Saturday evening he had ordered the grid operator to “urgently investigate” the outage.
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