Bosses warned days before fire shut down Heathrow

Heathrow bosses were warned of the risk of the failure of a power substation days before an electrical fire shut the airport for almost 24 hours, MPs have been told.

- SIMON CALDER

Nigel Wicking, chief executive of the Heathrow Airline Operators' Committee (HAOC), said: "I'd actually warned Heathrow of concerns that we had with regard to the substations and my concern was resilience."

A fire broke out in a transformer within the North Hyde electrical substation in Hayes, north of Heathrow, late in the evening of Thursday 20 March. In the early hours of Friday morning, 21 March, the airport announced it would close until at least midnight – though later that evening, some flights were allowed to depart.

More than 1,400 flights were diverted or cancelled by the shutdown, affecting a quarter of a million passengers.

Mr Wicking heads the body representing more than 90 airlines using the UK’s busiest airport. The airlines’ representative told the transport select committee that he first raised the issue on 15 March “following a number of, a couple of incidents of, unfortunately, theft, of wire and cable”.

He said the loss of power “on one of those occasions, took out the lights on the runway for a period of time”. “That obviously made me concerned,” he said.

Mr Wicking spoke to the chief operating officer and chief customer officer two days before the fire closed Heathrow.

A Heathrow spokesperson said: “The incident Mr Wicking referred to had no relation to the North Hyde substation – it did not involve the three main incoming power supplies to the airport. This issue related to a minor substation, of which there are 250 at the airport.