The UK’s transport secretary has mentioned she would “battle to sleep” if she had been operating Heathrow airport, amid stories that its chief govt slept in the course of the early hours of an unfolding disaster on Friday.
A hearth at a close-by electrical energy substation brought about chaos on Friday because the airport was shut, inflicting chaos for greater than 200,000 passengers world wide.
The airport’s boss, Thomas Woldbye, went to mattress at 12.30am, the Sunday Occasions reported, and left the chief working officer, Javier Echave, to take key choices whereas the substation powering the airport burned.
Heathrow officers instructed the newspaper that the choice was taken so Woldbye was higher rested when he would take the choice to reopen the airport the subsequent day.
He had attended an occasion in central London when the ability went late on Thursday night time earlier than returning to the airport, it reported. He then resumed work at about 7.30am and was in his workplace shortly after 9am. Woldbye, who took the reins at Heathrow in October 2023 and beforehand ran Copenhagen airport for 12 years, was paid £3.2m final 12 months, together with a £2.2m bonus.
Heidi Alexander, the transport secretary, declined to say whether or not she had confidence in Woldbye. She instructed LBC radio: “I’ve needed to cope with some fairly nerve-racking conditions in my time. I in all probability would battle to sleep, to be trustworthy.”
Alexander added: “It’s my understanding that he positioned his chief working officer in cost. He can have additionally identified that there was going to be an enormous variety of very troublesome choices the next day.
“I’m not going to justify choices that Heathrow management did or didn’t take. I wasn’t sat on the desk. I didn’t have the knowledge that he had obtainable to him at the moment.”
Europe’s busiest airport had greater than 1,000 flights cancelled on Friday after the hearth on the substation in Hayes, west London. Flights restarted on Saturday and the airport was again to regular by Sunday, albeit with some slight delays.
Alexander instructed ITV’s Good Morning Britain on Monday: “If he [Woldbye] had belief within the chief working officer to take that call, and if his judgment was that he was going to have a complete variety of vital choices to be taken within the following 24 hours, then I’m not going to second guess why he got here to the conclusion that that was the proper factor for him to do.”
The chief executives of British Airways and Virgin Atlantic labored by means of the night time because the Heathrow shutdown compelled flights to be diverted and grounded, the Sunday Occasions reported.
Woldbye refused to remark on whether or not he ought to nonetheless be in his function when requested by the BBC on Saturday.
Alexander’s feedback got here as a disagreement broke out between Heathrow and Nationwide Grid. The pinnacle of Nationwide Grid, mentioned on Sunday that there was sufficient energy for Heathrow to stay open throughout the whole interval it was shut down on Friday, with electrical energy supplied by two different substations.
However a spokesperson for the airport mentioned on Monday: “Because the Nationwide Grid’s chief govt, John Pettigrew, famous – he has by no means seen a transformer failure like this in his 30 years within the business. His view confirms that this was an unprecedented incident and that it could not have been potential for Heathrow to function uninterrupted.
“Tons of of vital methods throughout the airport had been required to be safely powered down after which safely and systematically rebooted. Given Heathrow’s measurement and operational complexity, safely restarting operations after a disruption of this magnitude was a major problem.”
The vitality secretary, Ed Miliband, has ordered the Nationwide Vitality System Operator to research the ability outage. An inner assessment of the airport’s disaster administration plans and its response to the disruption might be undertaken by the previous transport secretary Ruth Kelly.
Heathrow mentioned it was operating a full schedule on Monday, with greater than 1,300 flights deliberate. It managed greater than 2,500 flights over the weekend, serving greater than 400,000 passengers.
A spokesperson mentioned: “We apologise for the inconvenience attributable to Friday’s closure, following a major hearth at an off-site energy substation. Our ongoing precedence stays serving our passengers and getting them safely and rapidly away on their journeys.”
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