The Prime Minister said that he was “deeply concerned” by the closure of Heathrow airport due to a power reduction caused by a fire in a nearby electrical substation.
Sir Keir Starmer told the BBC “that there were questions” for the bosses of the largest airport in the United Kingdom to answer the closure of 6 p.m. Friday, which disrupted the trips of some 200,000 passengers.
Heathrow defended his decision to close on Monday on Monday after the statements he had enough power to operate following the fire in the sub-station.
The airport said that he had to die from the flights because of the time it took to go from damaged substation to two alternative power supplies, but added that “lessons can and will be learned”.
The impact of the fire on Friday from a single source of energy has raised questions about the resilience and the catastrophe plans of Heathrow, which sees thousands of passengers and millions of trade books pass daily among its four terminals.
The airport, as well as National GRID, supervised the United Kingdom electricity network, and Heathrow, agreed that the impact of fires that broke out at the under-station in Hayes was unprecedented.
But John Pettigrew, CEO of National GRID, told Financial Times that two other substations had remained operational and capable of fueling the airport.
He said that he did not remember a transformer who had failed such a measure during his 30-year career, but said that there was a “level of resilience” provided by two other deposits.
“Each individual sub-station can provide enough power to Heathrow,” he said.
In an interview with the BBC, Sir Keir said there were still unanswered questions.
“I don’t want to see an airport as important as Heathrow descending as he did on Friday, so I’m not comfortable with that for a second,” he added.
An investigation was ordered to establish what happened, with initial conclusions to provide the government in the six weeks.
An internal examination of the airport crisis management plans and its response will also be undertaken by the former transport secretary Ruth Kelly, who is an independent member of the Heathrow board of directors.
Heathrow has emergency emergency power supplies, which use generators and diesel batteries, but they only operate crucial safety systems, such as landing and track lights.
A separate biomass energy generator also provides heat and electricity to Terminal Deux.
The director general of the airport, Thomas Woldbye, said that a rescue transformer had failed during the energy cutting, which means that the systems should be closed before electricity could be restored.
Heathrow directors decided to close the airport for security land while they were switching to national national grid supplies.
The duration of the closure made the airlines merged, which had to pay the cost of the reimbursement and the license of customers as well as passengers blocked in hotels and covering food expenses.
Willie Walsh, former boss of British Airways and chief of the air organization IATA said on Friday that it was a “clear airport planning failure”.
Since then, the BBC has contacted the main airlines operating from Heathrow’s terminals to ask how many Friday the cost of Friday’s closure, but all approached have refused to comment or not respond.
It is understood that there are concerns in the industry, but that there is no recovery mechanism for such costs from the responsible airport, when the disruption of flights is out of the control of airlines.
Transport secretary Heidi Alexander told the BBC that the “well -designed” resilience plans of the airport operated as expected, but added that they had never been designed to protect the entire energy supply of the entire airport.
