The chief executive of Heathrow is ‘proud’ of how the airport responded to a power outage that sparked global travel chaos after hundreds of flight were cancelled.
Thomas Woldbye was grilled over claims that Europe’s biggest airport had become an international ‘laughing stock’ after a substation fire caused a temporary power loss and forced hundreds of flights to be grounded on Friday.
Nearly 300,000 passengers were affected by the meltdown, which led to the cancellation or delay of more than 1,350 flights.
Tens of thousands of travellers are still stranded across the globe today, while others fear missing funerals, hen-parties and holidays of a lifetime as a result of the chaos.
But despite the ongoing chaos, Mr Woldbye told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme he was ‘personally quite proud’ of his staff’s response to the unprecedented scenes and appeared to shift the blame for the outage.
‘Don’t forget the situation was not created at Heathrow Airport. It was created outside the airport and we had to deal with the consequences,’ he told presenter Emma Barnett on Saturday.
The airport boss, whose salary is believed to be around £5million a year, also refused to comment on whether he should still be in his role following the disaster, saying ‘I will let others judge if they think there is an issue’.
Operations at Heathrow were normal on Saturday morning after flights began taking off on Friday following hours of closure after a blaze at an electricity substation in Hayes cut power to the west London airport.
As Heathrow shut down sparking worldwide travel carnage:
Chief executive of Heathrow Thomas Woldbye (pictured) is ‘proud’ of how the airport responded to a power outage that sparked global travel chaos
Smoke billows from the substation in Hayes amid efforts to douse the remainder of the flames after a fire caused a temporary power loss at Heathrow Airport
Heathrow expects to be back to full operation today as flights resumed at Europe’s biggest airport after a substation fire caused a temporary power loss. Pictured: Planes on the Heathrow runway after the airport re-opened on Saturday
Heathrow airport terminal 5 today is packed out with passengers after the closure on Friday
Travellers wait at Terminal 5 as Heathrow Airport slowly resumes flights after a fire cut power to the airport
Mr Woldbye told BBC radio 4’s Today programme he does not ‘expect any major amount of flights to be cancelled or delayed’ but there will be some as with any ‘busy day’ at the airport.
He was unable to say how long it would take for stranded passengers to get to their destinations, claiming it was a question for the ‘airlines to answer and will vary on where we are in the world and what airlines we are talking about’.
Ms Barnett then pressed the airport boss on claims from Jason Bona, the owner of logistics and supply chain company PS Forwarding, that Heathrow had become an international ‘laughing stock’ in the wake of the fire.
Mr Woldbye replied saying Mr Bona did not have ‘the necessary insight’, adding he was ‘personally quite proud’ of the airport’s response to the situation.
‘I am proud of the entire ecosystem and that’s not just Heathrow, that’s our handlers, our airlines, our engineers, the fire station.
‘I am proud of what the people did to get us out of the situation. Don’t forget the situation was not created at Heathrow Airport. It was created outside the airport and we had to deal with the consequences.’
Mr Woldbye said investigators were still trying to establish who was to blame for the disaster, but would only be able to do so when they ‘have all the facts’.
When asked whether he should still be in his position despite the incident, Mr Woldbye said: ‘I will let others judge if they think there is an issue.’
Travellers arrive at Terminal 2 as Heathrow Airport slowly resumes flights on Saturday
Travellers arrive at Terminal 5 as Heathrow slowly resumes flights after a fire cut power to the Airport on Friday
Smoke is seen billowing from the electrical substation in Hayes on Saturday morning after it caught fire on Friday
Firefighters remain at the scene of the fire at an electrical substation in Hayes after it suffered a large explosion
Counter-terrorism police have been leading a probe into the cause of the fire, although the London Fire Brigade are treating it as ‘non-suspicious’.
Westminster sources blamed human error for the disaster, while those ‘familiar with the investigations’ claimed an electrical engineer sparked the fire. ‘It’s always cock-up rather than conspiracy,’ a source told Politico.
Airlines have warned the disruption could last for days, with dozens of flights departing and arriving from all over world, including New York, Singapore and Delhi, having been cancelled this morning
Dozens of arrivals into Heathrow were cancelled on Saturday morning, although the vast majority of scheduled morning flights departed successfully, with a handful of delays and cancellations.
BA, which has a major presence at Heathrow, said it expects to operate around 85% of its scheduled flights at the airport on Saturday, with around 90 expected to be cancelled out of roughly 600 scheduled.
A BA spokesman said: ‘We are planning to operate as many flights as possible to and from Heathrow on Saturday, but to recover an operation of our size after such a significant incident is extremely complex.
‘We expect around 85% of our Saturday Heathrow schedule to run, but it is likely that all travelling customers will experience delays as we continue to navigate the challenges posed by Friday’s power outage at the airport.’
Chief executive Sean Doyle described the situation at Heathrow as ‘unprecedented’ and said there will be a ‘huge impact’ over the coming days. Virgin Atlantic said it expects to operate a ‘near-full schedule’ on Saturday, adding there will be ‘limited cancellations’.
Planes can be seen taking off from Heathrow as the airport re-opened on Saturday
Heathrow airport terminal 5 today is packed out with passengers after the closure on Friday
People with luggage arrive at Terminal 4 of the Heathrow a day after a fire at a nearby electrical substation wiped out its power
Travellers arrive at Terminal 5 as Heathrow Airport slowly resumes flights after a fire cut power to the airport on Friday
A passenger lying on the floor at Heathrow T5 on Friday after the fire knocked out power at the airport
A tearful stranded couple at Heathrow T5 on Friday after fights were cancelled due to a power outage at a electricity substation
Thousands of Brits had their holidays of a lifetime ruined, while others have are stranded as far away as Thailand and China.
Tartan Army fans who travelled to Athens for a Scotland match on Thursday were stuck in Greece on Friday after being told their flight back to the UK had been cancelled once they had already passed through passport control.
A group of four friends told MailOnline their Caribbean cruise dream had been blighted after the major travel hub closed due to the huge blaze.
Chloe, Ashley, Monisola, and their friend, who didn’t wish to be named, had been planning their trip, which begins in Miami, since January.
They paid £1,600 for the cruise, but the cost has since doubled after they rushed to book flights from Gatwick on Friday morning to ensure they could still travel.
Monisola said: ‘We need to be at Miami by tomorrow afternoon otherwise we are going to miss our cruise. The cruise lines are really strict – if you don’t get there, they will leave you behind, so we need to land in the next 24 hours.
‘So we have been checking flights, checking flights, and also we didn’t get notified by the airline until this morning. I found out from the Uber driver and our flight is at 9.40am.’
A British couple stuck in China also told MailOnline they have ‘no idea’ how they will get home after their flight was cancelled.
From left to right: Chloe, Ashley, Monisola and friend – a group of four pals who had their Caribbean cruise dream blighted after Heathrow was closed due to a blaze on Friday
Sharon Towers and her husband (pictured) said they are stranded in the airport as strict immigration policy means they can’t check into a hotel
Tracey Jones (pictured) is stuck in Bangkok, Thailand after her flight was cancelled
Dr Don Cardy, 65, and his wife Sue, 60, who have had to pay £400 for an Uber to Manchester, after their connecting flight in Heathrow was cancelled
Cara O’Connor, 31 and from County Kerry, was left ‘devastated’ by the travel chaos at Heathrow as she feared her mother in law, sister in law, and two of her best friends may not be able to attend her hen party in England this weekend
Phil Hewitt, director of energy analysis firm Montel Group, said: ‘This potential lack of resilience at a critical national and international infrastructure site is worrying.
‘An airport as large and as important as Heathrow should not be vulnerable to a single point of failure.’
Heathrow has its own biomass power plant and diesel backup generators, but they can power only essential safety systems, such as lighting and exit doors.
The airport’s electricity usually comes from three substations, each of which has a backup transformer.
In the case of the damaged North Hyde substation, in west London, its backup transformer was also lost in the fire, which started shortly before midnight on Thursday.
Within hours, theories were swirling that sabotage, possibly even by Russia, may have been the cause.
Despite the involvement of counter-terror officers, Scotland Yard said it was ‘not treating this incident as suspicious, although enquiries do remain ongoing’.
‘Various specialist investigators continue to examine the scene and it is expected to take some time before full assessments can be completed,’ a spokesman said.
The Politico website said those ‘familiar with the investigations’ were pointing towards a mistake by an electrical engineer sparking the fire. ‘It’s always cock-up rather than conspiracy,’ a source said.
Heathrow bosses were facing questions last night about how a small fire shut down one of the world’s biggest airports. Pictured: The fire at Hayes electrical substation
The fire It resulted in unprecedented scenes, grounding flights for most of the day and exposing a major vulnerability in the country’s infrastructure. Dramatic images show flames tearing through the substation as smoke billows into the night sky on Friday morning
Firefighters douse the remainder of a fire that broke out at a substation supplying power to Heathrow Airport in Hayes, west London
The smouldering North Hyde electrical substation pictured on Friday
BA previously pinned the blame for its £150million IT meltdown in 2017, which stopped online check in and grounded dozens of plans, on a single worker who rebooted the system too quickly when the power failed.
The engineer allegedly failed to follow proper procedure at a Heathrow data centre and caused ‘catastrophic physical damage’ to servers leaving 75,000 stranded across the globe.
Offering a grovelling apology last night, Mr Woldbye said the airport had faced a situation ‘as bad as it gets for us’.
Supply had to be ‘restructured’ to draw on the other two substations, which involved restarting thousands of different systems – which takes ‘an enormous amount of time’, he said.
‘We are very sorry about all the inconvenience. We lost a major part of our power supply. This was an incident of major severity. We lost power equal to that of a mid-sized city.
‘Our backup systems have been working as they should, but they are not sized to run the entire airport. This is unprecedented. Everyone has been shocked but all our procedures have been working as they should.’
Mr Woldbye insisted Heathrow cannot guard itself ‘100 per cent’ against such incidents. The airport would be up and running today and passengers should go the airport at the time they normally would, he added.
Mr Woldbye’s full pay has not been published since he took over the job in 2023, but his predecessor John Holland-Kaye earned £6.4 million in his final year.
The substation fire in Hayes involved 25,000 litres of cooling oil igniting, the London Fire Brigade (LFB) has said
A firefighter helps putting out a fire that broke out at a substation supplying power to Heathrow Airport on Friday
Some 120 transatlantic services were forced to turn round in mid-journey. Passengers on flights from Singapore and Perth were diverted to Paris before taking buses to London
Downing Street said Mr Woldbye would have ‘questions to answer’, as the closure of Heathrow costs Britain around £20 million a day.
As well as catering for hundreds of thousands of passengers, the airport is also the gateway to 4,300 tons of cargo a day, worth £543 million.
A No 10 spokesman said: ‘There’s absolutely no doubt that there are questions to answer on how this has happened and what can be done to prevent the scale of disruption we’ve seen from happening again.’
The fire came a day after energy regulator Ofgem announced a £4 billion investment in plans to boost Britain’s under-pressure power network.
A 2022 report for the Mayor of London showed that the North Hyde substation was, at times, running at 106.2 per cent its rated capacity.
A substation is responsible for stepping-down high-voltage electricity from suppliers and distributing it to homes and businesses.
Dr Conor Murphy, of grid analytics firm NovoGrid, said overloaded transformers were a common cause of fires at substations.
‘The oil-cooled equipment in substations like this poses inherent fire risks, particularly from ageing infrastructure or overloaded system,’ he added.
‘Complete airport shutdowns due to power failure are extremely rare. The incident underscores broader grid vulnerabilities.
‘The cause of the fire will need to be determined to prevent similar events in the future – whether it was an electrical fault, human error or external factors.’
He added that it may be a year before the substation was restored because highly specialised equipment will need replacing.
Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said the complete shutdown of Heathrow made the airport look ‘quite vulnerable’.
Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander defended the airport while acknowledging the ‘immense distress and disruption’ its closure caused to passengers.
Justine Bayley, chairman of Stop Heathrow Expansion, said: ‘Just how competent are Heathrow’s bosses? We should not put all our eggs in that basket.
‘If we want to increase UK connectivity to the rest of the world, today’s fiasco has shown we need to spread the load and the risk to other airports.’
