In today’s bulletin, Charlie discusses Heathrow Airport’s recent power outage and gives advice on how we can learn from the event.
I did a load of research for this week’s podcast, so I thought I would use that research to write the bulletin as well. I wrote a bulletin some time ago on the CrowdStrike incident and whether consultants should add their two pence worth to commentary on the latest incident. So, I’m rather contradicting my own advice by writing about this one. For me, these are the key learnings I haven’t seen commented on elsewhere:
Power and Resilience: It’s Not That Simple
A lot of the early commentators on the incident were focused on power – why the airport didn’t have backup power and why it was dependent on one substation. Many showed quite a lack of understanding about backup power.
Heathrow is too large to have a backup generator that could power the entire airport – if they wanted one, it would be the size of a small power station and cost, according to the BBC, around £1 billion. With landing fees already among the most expensive in the world and the cost of a potential third runway looming, they would never be able to justify the investment. The standby generator they do have is for critical safety systems, such as power to the control tower and runway lights, so if a power cut occurs while a plane is landing, it can do so safely.
The issue of relying on just one power substation, as many suggested, was not true. Heathrow had power from other substations. The real problem is that when you lose electrical systems, it’s not as simple as just turning the power back on. Systems need to be powered on in sequence and often manually, to ensure there is no further damage and that everything is safely restored. This all takes time.
When you recover IT systems as part of disaster recovery, you should have set recovery scripts, which speed up the process. I would be interested to know if part of the delay was because those restoring systems had never practised it, and so took longer.
There was another news item suggesting that airlines had raised concerns about power issues in the months preceding the incident. However, if you read more carefully, this was actually about cable theft, which affected runway lights, not the whole airport.
We all know organisations are susceptible to power outages, and we build in resilience – but there is always the chance that our resilience measures fail and the power goes down.
I think this event was a ‘Black Swan’ (a rare, high-impact event that wasn’t predicted beforehand but seems obvious in hindsight) – no one planned for it, but once it happened, lots of people said it was obvious it was a risk and more should have been done.
Learn from Others – Or Repeat Their Mistakes
On 17 December 2017, a fire in an underground electrical facility caused an 11-hour power outage at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, the world’s busiest airport. Over 1,000 flights were cancelled, and thousands of passengers stranded. The fire damaged both main and backup power systems.
This incident is almost an identikit of the Heathrow event, but it wasn’t mentioned in any of the Heathrow commentary I saw. It doesn’t seem like lessons from that event were widely known or applied.
Reputation Matters Before a Crisis Begins
Heathrow is one of the most expensive airports for airlines in the world. So, when airlines are paying a premium, they are likely to be very annoyed if there’s an outage that disrupts their passengers.
The airlines’ communications were not sympathetic to Heathrow’s situation.
Timothy Coombs, in his Situational Crisis Communication Theory, talks about how organisations must consider their prior reputation when crafting their crisis communications strategy.
For me – and I suspect many others – Heathrow has a terrible reputation. I avoid it if possible, as there are always delays and cancellations. So, Heathrow’s communication strategy would have been difficult from the outset.
Leadership Must Be Visible in a Crisis
A side story was that Heathrow CEO Thomas Woldbye was informed of the outage at 00:30, but didn’t rush to the incident room – he stayed in bed so that he would be fresh to make decisions in the morning. Therefore, didn’t personally take the difficult decision to close the airport which he left to his Chief Operating Officer, Javier Echave, who was his deputy.
Leaders must be seen to lead from the front. They get the big money, and in disasters, they need to be there to take the big decisions.
I remember a while ago, when I was at Anglian Water in 1997, the CEO of Scottish Water stayed on holiday, claiming he could direct the operation from his holiday resort. This was during a major incident where diesel got into the Glasgow water supply, contaminating it and leading to a ‘don’t drink’ notice.
A number of politicians have also come under severe criticism for remaining on holiday during major incidents.
For example, in August 2021, as the Taliban rapidly seized control of Afghanistan, UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab was on holiday in Crete. Despite the escalating crisis, he remained abroad, delegating key tasks to junior ministers. This led to widespread criticism and calls for his resignation, including from former defence ministers, for not returning immediately to manage the UK’s response.
Substations Are Known Vulnerabilities
One of the first questions asked was whether this was a terrorist or nation-state sponsored attack – the type of threat MI5 Director General Ken McCallum warned about late last year.
To date, this has been declared an accident, and no terrorists are suspected to be involved.
However, substations are a known vulnerability. In July 1996, a six-member IRA unit was apprehended while planning to bomb six key substations in London, which could have caused prolonged blackouts across London and the South East. Their aim was to create major disruption and pressure the British government on Northern Ireland.
Final Thoughts: Are We Goldfish?
I think for Heathrow, the silver lining is that, in the words of Ted Lasso, “people are like goldfish” when it comes to travel disruptions and bad experiences.
When incidents like this happen, or when an airline lets people down or behaves badly, people are furious – but they quickly forget. I include myself in that. I find myself booking a flight from Heathrow as it’s the most convenient airport for getting to Malawi, or flying Ryanair shortly after swearing I’d never use them again.
Some will stick to their ‘never again’ decisions, but most of us revert to convenience and saving money.
Heathrow will have two enquiries – internal and external – and I hope some additional lessons are identified. But with the fast-moving news cycle we live in today, most people’s memory of this incident will fade very quickly.
