Mystery of Heathrow power outage

REPORT: NO EVIDENCE OF SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY BEFORE FIRE THAT CLOSED AIRPORT

- By NEIL LANCEFIELD

AN INTERIM report into the power outage which shut down Heathrow Airport for most of a day last month has raised “important questions”.

No flights operated at the west London airport from just after 1am on March 21 until around 6pm that evening, after a fire at a nearby electrical substation which started late the previous night.

More than 270,000 air passenger journeys were disrupted by the incident.

In the immediate aftermath, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband commissioned the National Energy System Operator (Neso) to conduct a review into what happened.

Neso published its interim report on Thursday last week, stating that “the root cause of the fire remains unknown whilst forensic fire investigations are ongoing”.

It noted that the Metropolitan Police confirmed on March 25 that it had found no evidence to suggest that the incident was suspicious.