Heathrow substation fire: What went wrong?

Quick Summary:

Questions have been raised over what caused the outage and why back-up systems failed?

Robin Potter, a research fellow at Chatham House, said Heathrow was one of only two UK airports – Gatwick is the other – that has any level of regulation around its resilience standards."These are actually the better airports in the UK for how their resilience is assessed and regulated," he said.

The airport has back-up power for certain systems, but kickstarting alternative power supplies for the whole airport takes time, and the systems need to be checked to ensure they are working properly.

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Article Details

Author / Journalist: BBC News

Category: Business

Markets: United Kingdom

Topics: Grid Source Back-up Fire Power National Been Heathrow Substation Airport

Source Website Secure: Yes (HTTPS)

News Sentiment: Neutral

Fact Checked: Legitimate

Article Type: News Report

Published On: 2025-03-21 @ 13:52:57 (16 hours ago)

News Timezone: GMT +0:00

News Source URL: bbc.com

Language: English

Article Length: 785 words

Reading Time: 5 minutes read

Sentences: 27 lines

Sentence Length: 30 words per sentence (average)

Platforms: Desktop Web, Mobile Web, iOS App, Android App

Copyright Owner: © BBC Business

News ID: 27219125

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News Last Updated: 14 hours ago

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