The director general of global airline association IATA, Willie Walsh, has suggested that the closure of Heathrow airport on 21 March amid a power outage poses “serious questions” about the facility’s contingency planning.
Heathrow – one of the world’s busiest hubs – announced at around 02:30 local time on 21 March that it would be closed until 23:59, wiping out a full day of flying, after it suffered a “significant” power outage following a major electrical substation fire. It then cautioned that it expected disruption to last for days, even once power is restored.
While the cause of the power outage is still being investigated – with reports indicating that counter-terrorism officers are involved owing to the gravity of the fire’s impact on critical national infrastructure – Walsh, who previously led Heathrow-based British Airways and its parent IAG, describes the situation as “yet another case of Heathrow letting down both travellers and airlines”.
He contends that “critical infrastructure” should not be “totally dependent” on a single power source. Such a scenario would represent “a clear planning failure by the airport”, he adds.
A statement from Heathrow airport explains that while the facility has diesel generators and “uninterruptable power supplies” in place, its back-up systems allow for the landing of aircraft and evacuation of passengers, but not the running of a full operation.
“Heathrow uses as much energy as a small city, therefore it’s not possible to have back up for all of the energy we need to run our operation safely,” the airport says.
Walsh further suggests that there needs to be a “fairer” allocation of the costs that result from handling passengers during disruption, rather than “airlines alone picking up the tab”.
His comments reflect long-running points of tension between the association and airport, with the former claiming that Heathrow’s airline charges are both high and unjustified, particularly given the standard of service offered to its customers.
While Heathrow’s operator has recently expressed its support for revisiting the process by which charges are set, it has often pushed back against airline criticism and the capping of its charges by regulators, citing the big profits made by some carriers and a lack of incentive for it to invest in infrastructure improvements.
Airlines are also not immune from being the source of disruption. Heathrow’s biggest airline customer British Airways, for example, has suffered several IT meltdowns over the past decade that have caused significant flight delays and cancellations, prompting it to overhaul its systems in recent years.
Data from aviation analytics firm Cirium shows some 1,330 flights were scheduled at Heathrow on 21 March, potentially carrying up to 291,000 passengers. But the impact of the closure will be felt by many more passengers, airlines and airports around the world, given Heathrow’s status as a major global hub.
The airport served 83.9 million passengers in 2024, marking its full recovery from the Covid-19 crisis and putting among the five busiest airports in the world, according to provisional Airline Business ranking data. It served 79.2 million passengers in 2023 compared with 80.9 million in 2019.
