Heathrow had enough power despite shutdown, says National Grid chief

Heathrow Airport had “enough power” from remaining substations despite Friday’s shutdown, the chief executive of National Grid has said.

Transcript

00:00So, Mr Pettygrew's comments, who is of course the chief of the National Grid, arguably suggest

00:08Heathrow Airport did have access to enough power last week to continue operating. These

00:15comments do align with comments also made by the Transport Secretary, Heidi Alexander,

00:22on Monday morning, who said the decision to suspend flights at Heathrow on Friday was

00:29taken by the airport because it needed to reboot systems after switching to a different

00:36power supply, not explicitly because it didn't actually have the power to operate. This comes

00:44as an investigation is ordered into how a fire which blazed through an electrical substation

00:52in Hayes on Friday morning managed to shut down one of the world's largest pieces of

00:59infrastructure and, of course, cause total travel chaos on an international scale for

01:06most of Friday. The Transport Secretary spoke to a number of media outlets on Monday morning.

01:14She told ITV that she would not, quote unquote, second guess the reported decision of the

01:20Heathrow chief executive, Thomas Waldby, to go to bed following the power outage. She

01:27also said she would have struggled to sleep if she was running Heathrow. Heathrow is now

01:34said to be fully operational after the disruption on Friday, with flights actually resuming

01:41earlier than expected on Friday evening.