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.

I agree that much of our infrastructure is aging and has been underinvested in.

I still think it’s highly unlikely that such a key piece servicing a major transport hub would not have contingencies. I mean it’s a bit strange that the back ups are not working too?

Very happy to be proven wrong, but the sceptic in me thinks this has deliberate sabotage written all over it.

At this stage they have to say that. Diplomacy and all that jazz.

TBF given many aircraft and crews are going to be out of position until we don’t know when It could take several days to get flying programmes back to normality, especially when it comes to Long Haul

I can see why at least some airlines especially the LHR based ones haven’t swung into action with rebookings this early in proceedings.

I suspect/know the Air Traffic side of the operation will have had power back ups of some sort.

Backing up the whole airport so jetties can move, baggage can be shifted, lights be on etc etc etc….don’t know.

We're not talking about a few flight cancellations though are we, an unexpected closure of an airport is a complety different matter

But I'm sure the airlines would appreciate any advice on how to set up such a system

@notimagain they do. A lot of people working in ATC have not been to bed yet. (other than the controllers who would have been on shift anyway).

They do, but it still takes time.

My parents were due to fly out this morning, they've already been rebooked for tomorrow.

Wifi has been on planes for years, including shorthaul so I'm not quite sure how it's escaped your attention. You don't seem to understand how wifi and flight mode work together either.

If you've got no idea because you dont even fly long haul, maybe don't come on here trying to tell off a poster who is in a shit situation in the first place?

The military talks were yesterday not today so they would have arrived before the airport closed.

the page hadn’t uploaded so I didn’t see you’d been beset with people saying the same thing, sorry!

Contingencies, yes.

Contingencies for the entire airport power supply, possibly not.

Sometimes it's only possible to do so much for reasonable cost. Especially, as you acknowledge, that much of our ageing infrastructure has been underinvested in and likely been massively outgrown by the increase in traffic over the last couple of decades.

Plus the priority in the same time will have been security upgrades. If they'd have said 'security will have to wait until we've brought the electrical supply and it's built in resilience up to the best modern standards' there'd have possibly been more successful terrorist attacks or disruption due to late stage near misses.

@CaveMum Diplomacy plus 'damage control' averting public fear and panic.

I really feel for anyone affected by this.

It's time air travel in the UK stopped focusing on big airports. When something goes wrong it's chaos.
Instead of increasing capacity at big airports like Heathrow, capacity should increase a smaller airports. Cardiff has loads of spare capacity, I'm sure others must be the same.

@JustMyView13

Rebooting flights like this is a nightmare

Say you have a plane of 200 passengers. (Lots of planes will be far far larger than this) going from Glasgow to London.

If you scheduled it for next week, then very few of those people would want the rebooking. As evidenced on this thread, half the people would decide not to go (cant be bothered, holiday would be over by the time they got there) lots would just get train and plenty would have already booked via an alternate provider.

The reality is that there is about 1500 flights impacted currently, some of those planes will fit about 500 passengers in each. Your looking at an easy half a million passengers.

Slowly those people will be contacted and plans made. Rebooking a flight for tomorrow and you'd get a big chunk of passengers, next Tuesday less so

Along with the drama of them not knowing where their and staff planes will be.

Its the same reason you can book train tickets while there's problems on the rails, people simply have a raft of things to get through and no idea how to do it

I thought the same but Dh informs me that the amount of generators needed for this would be huge and just not possible. We’ve got backup generators in my workplace but even they will only keep the absolute essential things powered, everything non essential stays off.

Are BA using Ada? I know air traffic control and Boeing systems use it.

I think the flights they are selling for next week are book on the assumption of the planes being where they should be.

Precisely my point! It’s not that hard to get people rebooked.

@xanthomelana

Thanks,

For info and context similar has happened elsewhere:

https://apnews.com/article/new-york-city-power-outages-eb88322b4643bc179641694b715fbb56

Not quite, its Heathrows responsibility to ensure reliance.

They've failed, the whole airport power run from one substation.... the same substation that runs half of Hayes too....

Question is though is do the good people of Cardiff want the flights and all that goes with it, and would there be enough passengers wanting to fly from say JFK or Dubai to Cardiff to make such routes viable.

I imagine when it happened, back up generators kicked in so people weren't stuck in lifts, the airfield wasn't plunged into darkness etc.

Its a bit like having a fire door, it allows you to get out safely, and do all the essential bits but shouldn't be relied on just to keep you working as normal as it only lasts for a period and will eventually fail.

Otherwise if there was then a generator problem, you'd have planes mid air having all the ground lights turned off on them, people stuck behind electric doors etc.

Like emergency lights at work, theres rarely enough power in big buildings to power as usual, but enough to do the minimum safety things.

Thinking about it, Easter break is not far away, and surely much more chaos would ensue with large scale deliberate disruption to a major airport, with far more children in the mix, but would that be too obvious?

We flew from Glasgow to Brisbane with Emirates changing in Dubai if there is a chance to change

They will be aware of what has happened though while they are here. I assumed that the previous poster meant the timing could be significant in terms of sending a message, rather then trying to prevent anyone from attending.

The Russians know we are weak - we wont retaliate in any way.

They have tested us many times to see our reaction. Salisbury poisonings spring to mind.

The system was tested during covid - and it broke - easy pickings for a hostile actor.