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Heathrow’s chief executive went to sleep instead of working through the night after a blaze knocked out an electricity substation near Europe’s busiest airport, according to reports.
The fire, which broke out at an electrical substation in Hayes on Thursday night, led to a major power outage that brought the airport to a standstill.
Thomas Woldbye, Heathrow CEO, delegated the formal decision to close the airport to his deputy in the early hours of Friday, the Sunday Times reports.
Mr Woldbye who last year earned £3.2 million, is understood to have been at an event in central London when the power first went out after 11pm on Thursday.
He then rushed to the airport. Once the size of the incident became clear senior leaders reportedly split into two “gold commands”.
Read: Global travel in chaos as UK’s Heathrow airport shuts amid outage
At around 12.30am it was decided that Woldbye’s team would go to bed, with Heathrow insiders insisting it was vital that the CEO was rested to take the more pivotal decision of when to reopen the airport.
A Heathrow spokesperson told the Standard that protocols were followed so Mr Woldbye “and his whole senior leadership team, were exactly where they were supposed to be during an incident of this scale”.
Heathrow Chief Operating Officer Javier Echave was left in charge and he took the final decision to close the airport, sending a notice to air crew at 1.44am on Friday.
Mr Woldbye resumed work at about 7.30am before arriving at his office at 9am.
The Sunday Times reports that airline chiefs such as Sean Doyle of British Airways and Shai Weiss of Virgin Atlantic are believed to have worked through the night.
Mr Woldbye spoke to reporters on Friday afternoon and defended the airport’s response to the outage.
Speaking to the media on Friday afternoon, he said: “First of all, what I’d like to do is to apologise to the many people who have had their travel affected during the day today. We are very sorry about all the inconvenience.”
He continued: “I’d like to stress that this has been an incident of major severity. It’s not a small fire.
“We have lost power equal to that of a mid-sized city and our backup systems have been working as they should but they are not sized to run the entire airport.”
Asked if there was a weak point in Heathrow’s power system, he said: “You can say that but of course contingencies of certain sizes we cannot guard ourselves against 100% and this is one of them.
“This has been a major incident. I mean, short of anybody getting hurt, this is as big as it gets for our airport and we are actually coming back quite fast I would say, when you consider the amount of systems that we have to shut down then bring back up and make sure that they’re safe.”
Almost 300,000 passengers across more than 1,300 flights had their trips cancelled on Friday after the fire.
Read also: London’s Heathrow closed Friday as fire causes major power outage, flights diverted
Around 25,000 litres of cooling fluid caught fire at the largest of the three electrical substations that supply Heathrow.
The airport was plunged into darkness, computers shut down and baggage carousels ground to a halt, leaving passengers using the lights on their phones.
Some 120 aircraft heading to the airport at that time were forced to either divert or return to their point of origin, measures which saw passengers on board Qantas flights to Heathrow from Singapore and Perth diverted to Paris before taking buses to London.
The Metropolitan Police said they are not treating the incident as suspicious while the London Fire Brigade (LFB) announced its investigation will now focus on the electrical distribution equipment.
A Heathrow spokesperson said: “We do not recognise the description of proceedings as set out in the Sunday Times. We have a robust crisis protocol that ensures we have experienced leaders able to take key decisions having had adequate rest – without compromising passenger or colleague safety by being too tired.
“This protocol was followed so that Thomas, and his whole senior leadership team, were exactly where they were supposed to be during an incident of this scale.
“Under round-the-clock leadership, teams across Heathrow were able to fully reopen in 24 hours and deliver an extended schedule on Saturday.
“While we are sorry that passengers and customers were impacted by the closure of the airport on Friday, our performance in safely accommodating over 250,000 passengers on Saturday shows that the correct decisions were taken at the right time. While some commentators spread ill-informed misinformation, we will focus on serving our passengers.”
The airport expects to operate a full schedule of over 1300 flights on Sunday.
The Heathrow spokesperson added: “We apologise for the inconvenience caused by our decision to close the airport on Friday following a significant fire at an off-site power substation.
“Yesterday, we served more than 250,000 passengers, with punctual flights and almost all passengers waiting less than five minutes for security. We have welcomed the Government’s announcement of an investigation into the cause and response to the off-airport power outage and have launched a review, to be chaired by former Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly, of Heathrow’s response. While these inquiries are ongoing, our focus remains on serving our passengers.”
