Industry associations have shared their thoughts about the several days of flight disruption brought about the closure of Heathrow Airport on Friday March 21.

The airport was closed due to a power outage following a fire at a nearby electrical substation, which supplies power to the airport.

Incoming flights were diverted to other UK and European airports while all departures were cancelled.

The airport was scheduled to handle 665 flight departures on the day and a further 669 flight arrivals, according to Cirium. It estimates that nearly 300,000 passengers were impacted.

The largest share of these flights (51%) were with British Airways, followed by Virgin Atlantic and Lufthansa.

Ed Miliband, Energy Secretary, said: “The loss of power to the Heathrow area has caused major disruption to thousands of people and many businesses. We are determined to understand what happened and what lessons need to be learned. 

“That is why working with Ofgem, I have commissioned the National Energy System Operator to carry out an investigation into this incident and to understand any wider lessons to be learned on energy resilience for critical national infrastructure, both now and in the future.”

National Grid’s Chief Executive, John Pettigrew, said the electricity transmission network was capable of supplying enough power to Heathrow throughout the airport’s closure. He said that while the “unprecedented” blaze closed the Hyde substation, two others that served Heathrow were working throughout the incident.

David Chappell, Chief Product Officer, Tripstax, commented: “The closure of Heathrow on Friday and the ensuing chaos was impossible to predict. No amount of contingency planning could have prepared the airport and airlines to deal with that level of disruption.

“There were a lot of worried, anxious and fraught travellers on Friday trying to find a way to their destination or get back home. There were also very busy travel departments re-routing and re-booking alternative flights, extending hotel stays or switching travellers to rail.

“But incidents like this demonstrate yet again how important it is for travel managers – and their TMCs – to have the right traveller tracking and risk technology in place to locate affected travellers, and communicate with them quickly to reassure and provide support. Anyone without that technology would be playing a guessing game of international Where’s Wally, with their travellers stranded somewhere feeling even more anxious.”

To help stranded passengers, Eurostar ran an additional service from London to Paris and from Paris to London, with 882 seats on each train.

Ryanair added rescue flights between Dublin and London Stansted for passengers – four extra flights between Dublin and Stansted on March 21 as well as four extra flights on March 22.

Blacklane waived its cancellation policy for any Heathrow airport booking until 22h00 GMT. 

Customers diverted to another London airport had their booking transferred to the new London arrival airport. Those whose flights were diverted to a UK airport outside London were contacted to re-book their new journey.

“In recognition of the unprecedented disruption we are providing vouchers towards re-booked rides,” said a spokeswoman for the chauffeur specialist.

Nigel Wicking, Chief Executive of the Heathrow AOC – a member of the Heathrow Reimagined campaign, said it expects the cost of the closure to its members to run into the 10s of millions of pounds.

“Unfortunately, a lot of passengers were displaced, with diversions and returns to originating airports – followed by cancelled departures,” he said.

“This will have had a knock on impact as crews were not where they were meant to be, and many would have gone out of hours or been stood down. Other costs will have also still been incurred for handling staff at Heathrow and all the other services that go into operating the airport. For example, there was a lot of wastage, as in T2/T4 all power was wasted and food stuffs in lounges went to waste.”

Of the investigation, he said: “We will need greater surety from Heathrow that the resilience procedures are in place for rapid recovery from such events. Given we had three substations, with multiple transformers, and one substation failed, why was there a lack of speed of switch over between substations – or was this not what was paid for and put in place between the power providers and Heathrow Airport Limited. We would also like to understand what other High Voltage users have as back up and their speed of switch over between power sources.”

Clive Wratten, CEO of the BTA, said: “Friday proved to be an incredibly busy day for our members, requiring additional staff and their resources around the globe to help clients get to where they need to be. I know of members who used their teams in Australia when the news broke during the night to start contacting and assisting clients. High call volumes continued throughout the weekend and the members 24/7 support came unto its own once again.

“This situation once again endorses the very reason why TMCs exist and shows our members the need to maintain and evolve their service to corporates. We foresee that additional assistance to clients of members will run into the rest of this week.”

Wratten said he believes it’s time to review whether airlines should be the ones left to pick up the bill for the client care aspect of incidents like these.

“These scenarios are out of their control and they’re the ones expected to provide travellers with hotel accommodation and subsistence when it’s clearly not their fault. The investigation needs to consider how businesses such as TMCs could claim compensation for the additional costs they incur.”