Heathrow bosses were warned about power supply after stolen cables turned off runway lights, MPs told
Mr Wicking said he believed Heathrow's Terminal 5 could have been ready to receive repatriation flights by "late morning" on the day of the closure, as "there was opportunity also to get flights out". Politics latest: 'Disastrous' not to shut Heathrow during outage, airport boss says A fire at an electricity substation in west London meant the power supply was disrupted to Europe's largest airport for a day - causing travel chaos for nearly 300,000 passengers, the committee heard.
"I'd actually warned Heathrow of concerns that we had with regard to the substations and my concern was resilience", said Mr Wicking, the head of a body representing more than 90 airlines using Heathrow Airport. "So the first occasion was to team Heathrow director on the 15th of the month of March. And then I also spoke to the chief operating officer and chief customer officer two days before regarding this concern. "And it was following a number of, a couple of incidents of, unfortunately, theft, of wire and cable around some of the power supply that on one of those occasions, took out the lights on the runway for a period of time. That obviously made me concerned." Other problems
The biggest challenge was getting information, Mr Wicking said. The desire for information on the outage and closure was so large that a Teams call on the day of the closure was "maxed out" with "a thousand participants", he added.
However, Heathrow chief executive Thomas Woldbye said keeping the airport open during last month's power outage would have been "disastrous". There was a risk of having "literally tens of thousands of people stranded in the airport, where we have nowhere to put them", Mr Woldbye told MPs. Fire surveillance and CCTV systems were down as a result of having limited electricity, he added, meaning it would not have been safe to reopen.
'The most expensive airport in the world' Heathrow should have top quality infrastructure and service, Mr Wicking said. "It is the most expensive airport in the world with regard to passenger challenges. So from our perspective, that means we should actually have the best service. We should have the best infrastructure," he added.
A review on resilience at Heathrow was done in 2018, he told MPs, but was told it was "not for sharing" with airlines. "I think it is for sharing now because frankly, we're paying enough", Mr Wickling said he told Mr Woldbye. "I don't feel that we should be paying more attention for further resilience. The resilience should have been there in the first place."
Questions and tensions raised but little answered
There was clear tension between airlines and Heathrow airport, but little clarity on much else.
Nobody took sole responsibility for the 21 March outage at Heathrow, and broader questions ultimately went unanswered despite a grilling.
Among them, what can be done to prevent this from happening again, and what is next for the airport in terms of resilience?
Also, who will be responsible for compensation?
Thomas Woldbye, Heathrow chief executive, said to give the airport "full resilience" it would cost more than £1bn, and airlines would have to help foot the bill.
Airlines argued back that they already pay enough for "the world's most expensive airport", and that the resilience "should have been there in the first place."
What about liability too?
That's also not been decided yet.
Mr Woldbye said discussions would happen when the facts were known, including why the fire started.
The airlines are also reluctant to pay, stating it was "not fair" for them to have to fork out for a situation they didn't cause.
The fact that concerns had been raised about Heathrow's power supply days before the "unprecedented" event may feature heavily in any argument moving forward.
They'll all be waiting for the, at least, three reviews currently underway before, no doubt, the blaming and finger-pointing will begin once again behind closed doors.
Uncertainty about Heathrow's foundation When asked if Heathrow is a problematic airport, Mr Wicking said, "We've got to look at this with regard to future growth and expansion, investment, et cetera. "We're not sure about the foundations of Heathrow as it stands at the moment; there have been a series of events such as this."
"We've had outages during last year where we had 82 baggage system issues... thousands of bags misconnecting and from a point of view of value as I said before, it's the most expensive airport in the world for passenger charges".
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