Can't help but to think of similarity to the film Die Hard 2, in that a single ? obscure point of failure could take out an entire airport!
I hope the investigation will include identifying other single points of failure, put in risk minimisation measures, so as to minimise future occurrence, etc. etc...
Could be worse - it could have happened at a busier time such as Thursday before the Easter weekend!
DK
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According to a certain newspaper, there was a dirty diesel backup setup.
Apparently removed because of net zero rubbish! Of course it may not be true, but it wouldn't surprise me!
Today they say it has biomass backup but not sufficient for everything!
Journalists jumping to conclusions again how unexpected.
Either way it isn't good!
Post last edited on 22/03/2025 09:59:10
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There is far better analysis on the issue on youtube from actual HV engineers than you will ever find in the rags which now call themselves newspapers.
It was a single point of failure, but it was also a HV substation serving thousands of properties in the area. Even if Heathrow had its own power station the outage would have affected the wider area supply chain for the airport.
From what I've seen I'd say well done Heathrow. The perfect world doesn't exist, they have plans for failure. They were brought into action and just 24 hours later the airport is back up and running.
1) It's just advertised how vulnerable the airport is to any nutter with a plan! - is the National Grid going to be 'nutter' proofed!!!!!! - CAN IT EVER BE!!!!! Maybe, it's my engineering background and insight into power grids, but I can think of a host of ways of achieving that effect maliciously without any great high tech methods! I have further thoughts on that train, but have no intention of sowing seeds in nutter brains, so won't be adding detail!
2) What happens when the airport expands with the now agreed extra runway! This incident was devastating enough on a global, let alone domestic scale, even though it occurred overnight with minimal aircraft in the air, and virtually no passengers on site! Imagine how catastrophic it could have been during the normal working day with the extra passengers and aircraft movements - it'd make the movies look over simplistic! More than scope for disaster with many hundreds of planes, unlike the relative handful this time, in the air all trying to find alternative landing slots on already near capacity in range airports!
No 'Operation Stack' option where they parked up the traffic on the M20 while the Tunnel was out of service! - You can't park aeroplanes in the sky!
Any local back up power system would only likely have capacity to keep power to bare bones essential services, strictly to get approaching aircraft safely down etc. They couldn't possibly have a standby system capable of running the entire airport as normal, no one would sanction or fund a system of sufficient scale to sit idle in case of a 'what if, once in a lifetime', event! The chaos would still happen as the airport would still be 99% non-functional, and for the duration of National Grid disruption!
Like the Fukushima Nuclear Plant accident in 2011, they had a back-up plan in place; however, they did not foresee the back-up plan would also fail!
Would love to read about LHR's beefed up Business Continuity Plan to minimise future occurrence of this magnitude.
DK
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Quote: Originally posted by daveyjp on 22/3/2025
There is far better analysis on the issue on youtube from actual HV engineers than you will ever find in the rags which now call themselves newspapers.
It was a single point of failure, but it was also a HV substation serving thousands of properties in the area. Even if Heathrow had its own power station the outage would have affected the wider area supply chain for the airport.
From what I've seen I'd say well done Heathrow. The perfect world doesn't exist, they have plans for failure. They were brought into action and just 24 hours later the airport is back up and running.
I agree with this. It's not realistic to expect a back up plan to continue running normal operations. The incident was dealt with safely and swiftly, and I'm not sure how much more could reasonably be expected.
I am curious as to what failed at the substation though. Given the way our water supply systems have been allowed to deteriorate in deference to shareholders, are we going to see our power supply going the same way?
I just happen to have been involved in a small sub station failure a few months ago. It exploded blowing the wooden roof off the brick built building that housed it.
Cause was put down to a failure of a HV cable serving the sub station A temporary generator was brought in to supply power for a couple of weeks until the cable and sub station were replaced.
I would have thought that it was a national grid problem rather than one for Heathrow. Surely being a "grid" system there should be a way of diverting power round a failed sub-station so that power can still be supplied even with a sub-station temporarily out of commission? One sub-station shouldn't be able to cripple such a vital piece of infrastructure such as a major airport. It's not the same thing at all as knocking out a housing estate or a shopping mall.
According to latest utterings from Nat Grid that I saw, Heathrow was also supplied by two other substations that could have coped with the demand.
The decision to shut down entirely was taken by Heathrow, rather than any absolute enforcement due to NO POWER! Something about the timing of switching sources impacting their ability to operate in the interim.
We're now into the AR*E covering stage, so all parties involved are trying not to be held responsible! All sorts from Governments to Airlines to passengers are asking how this NEVER event could happen with VERY pointed questions directed at (what should be!) very accountable people!
The truth may never be known! Big (the biggest!) businesses AND Governments involved, both rather too adept at burying inconvenient facts!
I would love to read their revised Risk Assessment, Business Continuity Plan and Disaster Recovery Plan.
In theory, BCP/DRP should be tested to make sure it works, especially for power outage and IT infrastructure.
DK
------------- Apple The Campervan - A Van For Work, Rest & Play!
- 2027: ? NL+DE+FR
- 2026: FR+DE
- 2025: 17/77
'24: 10/49; '23: 9/47;'22: 8/46; '21: 9/34
* Ex-tenter
* Treat life events like a dog: if you can't eat it, play with it or hump it, p1$$ on it and walk away!
Heathrow management were in front of Transport Committee today. I only saw a few minutes towards the end of questions about the incident and it appears the contingency system worked as it should have.
The airport had to be closed as it was an offsite fire they had no control over, continuing operations in that environment may not have been safe or possible.
NATS dealt with diversions in line with usual planned routines (the UK only had 17 available slots for affected flights) so turn backs and reroute to other non UK airports were the only options.
They did mention that to provide a system with some redundancy would cost in excess of £1bn as it would involve a large amount of work on cabling systems which have been in place for 70 years.
Quote: Originally posted by Monty15 on 25/3/2025
According to latest utterings from Nat Grid that I saw, Heathrow was also supplied by two other substations that could have coped with the demand.
The decision to shut down entirely was taken by Heathrow, rather than any absolute enforcement due to NO POWER! Something about the timing of switching sources impacting their ability to operate in the interim.
We're now into the AR*E covering stage, so all parties involved are trying not to be held responsible! All sorts from Governments to Airlines to passengers are asking how this NEVER event could happen with VERY pointed questions directed at (what should be!) very accountable people!
The truth may never be known! Big (the biggest!) businesses AND Governments involved, both rather too adept at burying inconvenient facts!
You need to remember that they need to justify their huge annual bonuses.
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Topic: London Heathrow Melt Down
via mobile 21/3/2025 at 8:39pm
