Cause of Fire that Shut Down Heathrow Airport Remains Shrouded in Mystery

Photo Credits: Los Angeles Times

A fire in one of the substations located near Heathrow airport in March rendered the airport non-operational and caused nearby homes to lose power.  

Although six weeks have passed since the incident, the investigators appointed by the government for an urgent enquiry into the matter are still unable to identify a solid reason with full confidence, as the root cause of the fire remains unclear. 

The National Energy System Operator (Neso) made a preliminary report which ruled out any suspicious activity behind the outage that cut power to the airport, affecting more than 1,350 flights and almost 300,000 passengers. 

The organisation also admitted that the “root cause of the fire”, which left about 67,000 homes without power, still “remains unknown”. Investigation into the maintenance history and design of the 57-year-old power substation will continue to determine whether it was meeting its legal requirements. It will also examine the configurations of the airport’s private electricity network, which took hours to repower after the outage, even as two nearby substations continued to operate as normal. 

Photo Credits: Los Angeles Times

Even when the power was restored, it took seven more hours for operations to resume at the airport, meaning flights and operations were affected for more than 24 hours in total.  

Neso said a dedicated team reviewed more than 600 pieces of evidence from the companies involved in the incident to inform its interim report. The final report is expected to be published in June.  

Meanwhile, Heathrow will continue its own investigations into the resilience of the substations and its design and history.