Heathrow Airport is shut until Friday night

[Ozgirl76]

And my husband is due to fly home to Australia on Friday evening. I predict chaos.
Airport is saying that people should not travel to Heathrow and should contact their airlines.

OK, now that in flight WiFi has been sorted by all the experts 😉the next thing is finding the cause of the fire.

I reckon it's far too early to say yet. Has any top level manager from the sub station or the fire chief been interviewed, or are they subject to "official secrets act".? Are sub stations privately run or public? The head of operations should be out there giving a reassuring update, not Ed Milliband at this immediate time anyway. Putting him out there without any reports is just going to encourage worry and sabotage theories, since the more they deny it's anything sinister without an engineer/fire chief commenting, the more people will theorise negatively. "Awaiting reports from the experts" is all one can say at the moment really.

I hope all who are affected will get to their destinations. The good thing is nobody was killed or injured.

The airport has no power, not even for coffee machines in many areas, they clearly do not use other sub stations.

Reliance on a substation, no matter the size, is bonkers, if Hayes is the only one, then that in itself should never have been allowed to happen.

they also have to be maintained, have monthly switch over tests. Have staff on call 24/7 to look after them. Replace them when they need it.
the sheer amount they’d need to continue services would be huge. Everything in an airport is electrical isn’t it.

like I say, if it was possible I’d imagine they’d have done it

Ok, just spoken to him
Every flight from US, turned back
Flight from far east either turned back or moved to European airports
He says one flight from Saudi Arabia was 5hours into a 10hour flight and they were turned back to Saudi….so 10hours of going nowhere

this is 100% both a hostile act and also a warning from Russia that they know how to, and are willing to, cripple the country, very quickly, in many ways. We are not prepared for it.

wrong post😶

For a lot of conspiracy theorists it's better to believe that there is some master manipulator behind all of this rather than incompetence at governmental level.

The UK has lacked investment in infrastructure since about the 1970s and this isn't a good image for a country thinking that Net Zero will be gained from electrifying everything.

That being said the IRA plotted to blow up power sub stations in the 90s, so these have always been targets.

There are also issues with a lot of people attempting to steal the cabling, so could be a gain of cable thieves.

It could be Russia (so shouldn't be ruled out), but in this climate we like to blame Russia or Andrew Tate for everything that goes wrong because it's convenient.

Well anything's possible, if you're prepared to throw enormous sums of money at it. Would people be prepared to pay an extra £100 for each flight out of Heathrow?

It's all about evaluating risk and right now nobody has all the facts. It's almost definitely untrue that Heathrow or any other major airport has done no contingency planning. They plan all the time for all sorts of events which will probably never happen, and will have a chain of command with key people who will have been woken between midnight and 1am to start to sort things out, along with people from ATC, the government, police, local council, etc etc. It is definitely going to take days or weeks for things to return to normal though.

many Or all?

granted I didn’t build Heathrow, but your going to use your nearest supply and for some of the airport, that won’t be Hayes.
if however, Hayes (being larger) supplies the important stuff like traffic control and security, it’s going to close the entire site isn’t it.

Given the post on similar fires below that do happen but don’t make the news how are you 100% certain?

I mean the statement from Gov means very little but I couldn’t say either way.

I have family in Atlanta & they are always saying its the busiest airport in the world

I can't really say, but the government won't be able to confirm it was an attack because they'd be forced to react.

Someone upthread mentioned a couple of stations on the Piccadilly line near Heathrow were briefly closed.

We are at war?? Has that been announced as official or some social media rubbish?

It's in no way realistic for places - including critical infrastructure - to be supplied by multiple substations as standard. Multiple lines yes as they have more frequent faults, and the substations themselves have redundancy within them. An entire substation going down is very rare. I would however have expected the airport to have back up generation on site.

i know hospitals have their own generator backups. So obviously those are completely isolated from supply.

The safety critical systems at Heathrow have backups..for example if you want to have the capability to support low visibility operations the various guidance systems and even some lighting has to have a fast switching alternate supply - that's done at most major airpotts

What you might not have is such a back up for all the ground handling.kit...

I'm under the flight path. Very quiet in the sky. Almost giving lockdown vibes.
Have two friends waiting in UAE airports to get on flights.
I cannot believe that Heathrow does not have its own power supply.

Other boards are available...sporners corner is an eye opener, there's a 'woo' board (not so great if you're on your own at home), I'm sure there was a humour board somewhere....or get yourself over to the preppers board, keeping busy is a good way to stave off obtrusive thoughts and for bonus points you can be smug when the supermarkets run out of pasta & toilet rolls.

I'm sure someone here knows but I'm hoping - in the event of a catastrophic event at the airport itself, that ground to air comms and runway lights and radar etc. will still work. In other words if an aircraft is on final approach will it get down if something awful happens.

I think I'll go on the ferry to Europe now. Half joking, whole in earnest.

But then again a large ship full of valuable containers holding god knows what is another target I'd say. If infrastructure IS being targeted that is.....

We have a great tradition of rail replacement by bus, it's an interesting development. Keep calm & carry on eh?

Oh no, Rail Replacement Services.

One of the scariest things you can ever encounter.

Yes, there is back up power.
Heathrow is a massive operation, there will be so many elements outside of flights actually taking off and landing that once there’s a major disruption like this, the knock on is awful.

@PatriciaHolm
I would imagine the first class passengers from the Qantas flight will be particularly miffed to be put on a bus! (It's over £7000 for the one-way flight). Maybe they will get their own bus?

Aren’t commercial pilots trained to land blind (as, in without instruments)
although having watched hours of big jet tv. I would imagine they’d just abort and try elsewhere. They do seem to be able to do that incredibly late

Thats not correct, it is realistic and it is done in the UK already.