The UK’s transport secretary has said she would “struggle to sleep” if she had been running Heathrow airport, amid reports that its chief executive slept during the early hours of an unfolding crisis on Friday.
A fire at a nearby electricity substation caused chaos on Friday as the airport was shut, with more than 200,000 passengers around the world affected.
The airport’s boss, Thomas Woldbye, went to bed at 12.30am, the Sunday Times reported, and left the chief operating officer, Javier Echave, to take key decisions while the substation powering the airport burned.
Heathrow officials told the newspaper that the decision was taken so Woldbye was better rested when he would take the decision as to whether to reopen the airport the next day.
He had attended an event in central London when the power went out late on Thursday night before returning to the airport, it reported. He then resumed work at about 7.30am and was in his office shortly after 9am. Woldbye, who took the reins at Heathrow in October 2023 and previously ran Copenhagen airport for 12 years, was paid £3.2m last year, including a £2.2m bonus.
Heidi Alexander, the transport secretary, declined to say whether she had confidence in Woldbye. She told LBC radio: “I’ve had to deal with some pretty stressful situations in my time. I probably would struggle to sleep, to be honest.”
Alexander added: “It’s my understanding that he placed his chief operating officer in charge. He will have also known that there was going to be a huge number of very difficult decisions the following day.
“I’m not going to justify decisions that Heathrow leadership did or didn’t take. I wasn’t sat at the table. I didn’t have the information that he had available to him at that time.”
She was asked later on Monday in the Commons whether expansion at Heathrow – which is expected to submit plans for a third runway to the government in the summer – would risk a greater meltdown in the future.
Alexander replied that it was “an unprecedented event of very significant magnitude” and that she still believed Heathrow could “continue to be a trusted partner for the government in the longer term”.
Europe’s busiest airport had more than 1,000 flights cancelled on Friday after the fire at the substation in Hayes, west London. Flights restarted on Saturday and the airport was back to normal by Sunday, albeit with some slight delays.
Alexander told ITV’s Good Morning Britain on Monday: “If he [Woldbye] had trust in the chief operating officer to take that decision, and if his judgment was that he was going to have a whole number of critical decisions to be taken in the following 24 hours, then I’m not going to second-guess why he came to the conclusion that that was the right thing for him to do.”
The chief executives of British Airways and Virgin Atlantic worked through the night as the Heathrow shutdown forced flights to be diverted and grounded, the Sunday Times reported.
Woldbye refused to comment on whether he should still be in his role when asked by the BBC on Saturday.
Alexander’s comments came as a war of words broke out between Heathrow and National Grid. The head of National Grid said on Sunday that there was enough power for Heathrow to remain open during the entire period it was shut down on Friday, with electricity provided by two other substations.
But a spokesperson for the airport said on Monday: “As the National Grid’s chief executive, John Pettigrew, noted – he has never seen a transformer failure like this in his 30 years in the industry. His view confirms that this was an unprecedented incident and that it would not have been possible for Heathrow to operate uninterrupted.
“Hundreds of critical systems across the airport were required to be safely powered down and then safely and systematically rebooted. Given Heathrow’s size and operational complexity, safely restarting operations after a disruption of this magnitude was a significant challenge.”
The energy secretary, Ed Miliband, has ordered the National Energy System Operator to investigate the power outage. An internal review of the airport’s crisis management plans and its response to the disruption will be undertaken by the former transport secretary Ruth Kelly.
Heathrow said it was running a full schedule on Monday, with more than 1,300 flights planned. It managed more than 2,500 flights over the weekend, serving more than 400,000 passengers.
A spokesperson said: “We apologise for the inconvenience caused by Friday’s closure, following a significant fire at an off-site power substation. Our ongoing priority remains serving our passengers and getting them safely and quickly away on their journeys.”
