Insiders claim that the electrician's failure is believed to have sparked a fire that led to the closure of Heathrow Airport last Friday.
The boss is left facing difficult questions after the chaos at Europe's busiest airports left around 300,000 passengers around the world due to the catastrophe. Inferno, the nearby Northhide Power Engine, caused a “severe blackout” at Heathrow, leading to a widespread blackout in West London.
The confusion has led to over 1,350 flights being delayed or disposed of, and removal of overseas holidays, preventing departures from the UK. It has been reported that about 120 transatlantic flights had to make U-turns during flight.
Counterterrorism police are spearheading the investigation into the disaster, but Westminster sources suggest that human error is a barrier. According to today's Politico website, you know the probe.
Source revealed to the outlet: “It's always a cock-up, not a plot,” reports Mirror.
Last night, eight long-distance British Airways flights were finally empty, but authorities still pressured the confusion. “First, how about critical infrastructure of national and global importance is entirely dependent on a single, unsubstituted power source,” said Willie Walsh, executive director of the International Air Transport Association and former head of British Airways.
A fire at the substation destroyed the transformer and damaged the backup, leaving Heathrow without power for most of Friday. Airport biomass power plants and diesel generators could only power critical safety systems, such as lighting.
The electricity had partially recovered by 2pm, but there was already serious confusion. Scotland Yard has since said “we have not treated the incident as suspicious, but the investigation is ongoing.”
Phil Hewitt, director of energy analysis firm Montel Group, added:
Heathrow CEO Thomas Woldbye has described the recent crisis as “as bad for us as it is bad,” and hopes that the full operation will resume by Saturday.
The airport was forced to “rebuild” the power source, pulled from two other substations and rebooted thousands of systems. This is a “huge and time-consuming” process.
Woldbye expressed deep regret over the confusion. “We apologize for the inconvenience. We lost most of the power supply. This was a major severity incident.
Despite the chaos, he ensured that the backup system works correctly, but it was not designed to power the entire airport. “The backup system is working fine, but it is not sized to operate the entire airport, which is unprecedented.
