Heathrow Closure

Agree - and I suspect that much like the reports into the Lancaster flood power cuts, or the Hornsea incident the report will once again make embarrassing reading in terms of being entirely visible with hindsight, and possibly even with foresight..

In this case once in terms of the how the transformer was able to fail quite so spectacularly, and if inspections etc might have seen it coming, and secondly, given that only  one of the three HV supplies failed, in terms of why the airport  failed to rapidly engage the redundant supplies it had after all been designed with, to best ability.

Mike

The ability (or lack thereof) to switch between healthy utilitiy supplies is a concern but "Failure of utility power" seems like it should be pretty high on any business continuity risk assessment to me. 

I still feel like there must be more to this than poor planning.

You may also be interested in what some of our experts at the IET have to say:

 https://www.theiet.org/media/press-releases/press-releases-2025/press-releases-2025-january-march/21-march-2025-iet-experts-respond-to-heathrow-closure-due-to-substation-fire 

It's odd as North Hyde SGT's were at 110% nameplate even two years ago -- see Appendix 1 and Appendix 2 in  https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/checked_westlondoncapacity_0.pdf 

The "Heathrow Management" response is pretty naive and suggests an accpetance that an event like this would be inevitable.  Vey concerning.

Yes, it looks like this is the case but I don't think that is a justification. My company's FMEA guidance states that "no artificial limit shall be placed on the depth and scope of the analysis". If there is a single point of failure then it's reasonable to find out what will stop working.

Regulations vs. Reality: Where Did It Go Wrong?

The UK’s electricity distribution regulations emphasize reliability, but Heathrow’s case suggests that these safeguards might not be enough. Airports typically have multiple power feeds from different substations, ensuring automatic switching in case of failure. Heathrow, on the other hand, seems to have overlooked this critical aspect or underestimated the consequences of a single failure.

The irony? Heathrow’s terminals are designed to handle thousands of flights and passengers daily, yet a single power outage can bring this vast system to its knees.

UK regulators must mandate power redundancy for critical infrastructure to prevent similar failures in other high-risk locations.

Heathrow’s power vulnerability is a stark reminder that even the most advanced systems can crumble under a single failure point. If the busiest airport in the world can be paralyzed by something as fundamental as power supply, its A Wake-Up Call for Global Airports

In an age where cyber threats, climate-related disruptions, and grid instabilities are increasing, redundancy isn’t a luxury—it’s a necessity. Heathrow’s chaos should serve as a wake-up call for governments, regulators, and infrastructure planners worldwide: Never leave critical operations at the mercy of a single point of failure.

Interesting - any thoughts on why they would all be sat on the North Hyde feed in normal opereational mode and not distributed across the feeders e.g. 2 on North Hyde/ 1 on longford?

Although none of this answers the question as to lack of independant power back-up on the site.

The FMEAs are rarely done at the system of systems level (the old Conway's Law).

In this case we appear to have a supra system problem where too many sub-systems (from an airport operators viewpoint) have gone down and that has compromised all their individual backup plans, and the whole thing collapsed ('safety shutdown') from the middle (local operational safety management calling the shots) independently of any thing that some distant HV switching 'maintenance man' could do.

True, but that's why we do Failure Modes and Effects Analyses (FMEAs) with the corresponding FMEA proving tests in other industries. No excuses for them not doing this at Heathrow.