Heathrow bosses were warned about power supply after stolen cables turned off runway lights, MPs told

Heathrow bosses were warned its power supply was vulnerable less than a week before the major outage in March, a committee of MPs has heard.

A terminal at the airport could also have had some flights moving by mid-morning rather than being shut for a day, the committee was told.

Nigel Wicking, the chief executive of Heathrow Airline Operators' Committee, told MPs of the Transport Committee he raised issues about resilience on 15 March after cable and wiring theft took out lights on a runway.

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".

A fire at an electricity substation in west London meant the power supply was disrupted to Europe's largest airport for a day on 21 March - causing travel chaos for nearly 300,000 passengers, the committee heard.

Mr Wicking, the head of a body representing more than 90 airlines using Heathrow Airport, told MPs: "I'd actually warned Heathrow of concerns that we had with regard to the substations and my concern was resilience."

He said he spoke to the Team Heathrow director on March 15 about his power concerns, and the chief operating officer and chief customer officer on March 19.

Mr Wicking added: "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."

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", Mr Wicking added.

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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.

'Most expensive airport in the world'

Heathrow should have top quality infrastructure and service, Mr Wicking told MPs.

"It is the most expensive airport in the world with regard to passenger challenges," he said. "So from our perspective, that means we should actually have the best service. We should have the best infrastructure."

A review on resilience at Heathrow was done in 2018, according to Mr Wicking who said he was told it was "not for sharing" with airlines.

He added that he had told Mr Woldbye: "I think it is for sharing now because frankly, we're paying enough.

"I don't feel that we should be paying more attention for further resilience. The resilience should have been there in the first place."

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... it's the most expensive airport in the world for passenger charges".

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