Heathrow chief Thomas Woldbye will be quizzed by MPs today on the “operational factors and decisions” that led to its near-24 hour shutdown due to an offsite power outage.
The Commons transport committee will hold a hearing into the March 21 incident which forced around 1,400 flights to be cancelled or diverted and more than 200,000 passengers to be displaced.
The cross-party committee “will examine whether it could have all been dealt with differently, and what lessons can be learnt”.
MPs will question chief executive Woldbye on the “operational factors and decisions” that led to the hub closing for as long as it did, “and how the vital piece of infrastructure appeared to have a single point of failure”.
Also facing questions will be Nigel Wicking, chief executive of the Heathrow Airline Operators Committee, which represents airlines that operate at the airport, and representatives from National Grid and Southern Electricity Networks.
A statement ahead of the hearing said: “There will be questions on whether alternative power sources could have been used earlier, after the National Grid suggested two other substations could have powered the entire airport. Instead, a number of diesel back-up generators fuelled only safety-critical functions.”
The committee will ask whether Heathrow “fully realised the risks of this type of system failure happening” and “whether this type of incident was deemed so unlikely to happen that investing in additional resilience was deemed unnecessary”.
MPs “will also be interested to hear how Heathrow co-ordinated with other airports in the UK and Europe to accommodate diverted flights, how the company engaged with dozens of airlines that were affected, and how customers and stakeholders will be compensated”.