Overview

• The internal report finds Heathrow’s decision to suspend operations after a fire at the 75-year-old North Hyde substation was correct and safeguarded safety and border integrity.
• Chief Operating Officer Javier Echave closed the airport at 1:15 am on March 21; CEO Thomas Woldbye first learned of the outage at 6:45 am because his phone had gone into silent mode.
• The power outage led to the cancellation of about 1,400 flights and disruption for over 200,000 passengers, with limited arrivals from 4 pm and full reopening on March 22.
• The review urges Heathrow to adopt a secondary means of contact for critical incidents and to accelerate investments in backup power and network resilience.
• The National Energy System Operator’s interim report left the cause of the substation fire undetermined; its final findings on transformer failures are expected by the end of June.