Taxi Driver Online

Major disruption as Heathrow closed all day

oh boy can't even begin to imagine the chaos as people scramble to get flights to and from other airports and the roads around heathrow jam up with cars going there anyway !

If it wasn't terrorists/Russian FSB then it will give them ideas

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cly24zvvwxlt

Heathrow Airport will be closed all day Friday after a fire at a nearby electrical substation that supplies it with power

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lack of modern legislation is the iceberg sinking the titanic of the transport sector

Maybe before Heathrow spends billions and billions on a third runway they need to spend a few quid on a second generator.

Those running Heathrow should be utterly ashamed of themselves. 10s of 1000s of people have been stranded across the globe because Heathrow has idiots running the airport.

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IDFIMH

you would have thought that all airports would have a back up system in case of a black out that would at least enable them to partially operate although i suspect the huge demand for power of modern systems probably makes that more difficult.

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lack of modern legislation is the iceberg sinking the titanic of the transport sector

So the plot thickens

National Grid confirms Heathrow never lost access to power

The chief executive of the National Grid has confirmed power was available to keep Heathrow open throughout Friday's shutdown.

In an interview with the Financial Times, John Pettigrew said the fire that knocked out a substation was a "unique event", but that two other substations remained operational and capable of powering the airport in west London.

Heathrow chief executive Thomas Woldbye had said on Friday that the shutdown was not caused by a lack of power, but was due to the time it took to switch from the damaged substation to the other two.

The airport is under pressure from airlines to explain why flights were suspended for 18 hours after the fire in the early hours of Friday morning.

The fire started in a transformer within the electrical substation in Hayes, north of Heathrow, around midnight.

The airport has emergency back-up power supplies, which use diesel generators and batteries, but these only keep crucial safety systems running, such as landing equipment and runway lights.

A separate biomass power generator also provides heat and electricity to Terminal Two.

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lack of modern legislation is the iceberg sinking the titanic of the transport sector

My guess is that staff and management had never been trained on how to deal with such a situation.

and Didn't have a clue

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lack of modern legislation is the iceberg sinking the titanic of the transport sector

All they have spent the last few years on is concentrating on how to mug off taxi drivers who are merely assisting the airport's clientele.

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IDFIMH

Or The many different systems that were instantly turned off without following the normal shut down procedure can't simply be turned back on. They need to be rebooted or opened in a safe mode before being able to be operated correctly. This could and probably did take a few hours and until they were all done it would not have been safe to re open the airport.