Heathrow’s chief executive could not be reached to tell him about the airport’s closure after a power outage because his phone was on silent, an inquiry has revealed.
Thomas Woldbye was asleep when chief operating officer Javier Echave decided to suspend operations at 1.15am on 21 March after a fire at a substation in west London affected the supply of electricity to the site, it has emerged.
The airport closed for around 16 hours, cancelling about 1,300 flights and causing travel chaos for nearly 300,000 passengers.
Heathrow commissioned an inquiry into what happened, led by former transport secretary Ruth Kelly, who is an independent member on the airport’s board.
The inquiry’s report, published on Wednesday, found that Mr Woldbye “was not involved” in the decision to suspend operations as he was unaware of several attempts to reach him due to his phone being on silent mode until 6.45am on 21 March.
“Although his phone was on his bedside table, Mr Woldbye reported that it did not alert him to the F24 alarms [to activate emergency procedures] or to Mr Echave’s other calls because the phone had gone into a silent mode, without him being aware it had done so and he was asleep at the time,” the report stated.
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Mr Woldbye expressed “his deep regret at not being contactable during the night of the incident”, according to the review.
The inquiry recommended that Heathrow should consider having a “second means of contact” to notify key individuals about critical incidents.
However, it also found that the decision to suspend operations was “correctly made” as it was “essential to protect the safety and security of people, as well as the integrity of the airport and the UK border”.
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Ms Kelly said: “The evidence confirms that Heathrow made the right decisions in exceptionally difficult circumstances.
“Whilst the disruption was significant, alternative choices on the day would not have materially changed the outcome.
“The airport had contingency plans in place, and the report highlights that further planned investment in energy resilience will be key to reducing the impact of any similar events in the future.”
But Nigel Wicking, the chief executive of Heathrow Airline Operators’ Committee (AOC), described the report as “back patting” because it did not “recognise the significant cost impact” borne by airlines.
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He told MPs on the Transport Select Committee he had warned Heathrow bosses the power supply was vulnerable less than a week before the outage.
Heathrow AOC, which has more than 90 members including Virgin Atlantic and British Airways, criticised the handling of the closure, saying flights could have taken off earlier on Friday and that communication was “appalling”.
The inquiry found there “may have been opportunities to open parts of the airport slightly sooner” on 21 March but this “likely would have been only by a maximum of a couple of hours or so”. It started accepting limited flight arrivals from 4pm and departures from 8pm that day.
Mr Wicking told Sky News’ business and economics reporter Sarah Taaffe-Maguire on Wednesday that the review did not help to better understand whether the airport had the resources it needed.
Instead, he said he was looking to the full National Energy System Operator report, expected to be released by the end of June.
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A spokesperson for the Heathrow Reimagined campaign group, whose supporters include British Airways’s owner International Airlines Group and Virgin Atlantic, said: “Lessons must be learnt from the closure of Heathrow during March’s power outage, but the internal Kelly Review allows Heathrow to set and judge by its own standards.
“It fails to properly tackle the poor contingency planning and years of inefficient spending that left Heathrow vulnerable.”
