Heathrow Closure

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.

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

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 

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 

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.

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

There's always a point of failure :Big-Smiley: [Hollywood movies various]

It's the errors of omission not commission (never saw it coming) that make for the big disasters.

What we haven't seen (yet) is the 'shutdown the airport' cascade of guidance and how that got overloaded. We've had major delays at Heathrow before, but electricity is becoming an essential to life aspect.

Seen the DPA news feed https://www.dpaonthenet.net/article/214558/What-really-happened-at-Heathrow--Experts-explain.aspx#

At least someone picked it up.

The various New York shutdowns (e.g. 1977, 2003, etc.) have similar cascades, and other less well know European ones..

That was a nice picture of the quoted IET expert!

Peter Brooks

Palm Bay FL