The 75-page Heathrow Airport report by Rt Hon Ruth Kelly into the Heathrow Airport closure on 21st March 2025 details a large number of findings and recommendations.
Below are some key takeaways that can be applied to almost all organisations
Background
A complete power failure was recorded as a low probability high impact event on the Heathrow airport risk register, and numerous contingent plans, such as how to switch power supplies, were in place.
The 24-hour closure of the airport resulted from the unprecedented nature of the fire at the North Hyde substation that caused the failure of all three of the National Grid super-grid transformers at the site.
Headline findings of the report:
- The decision to stop operations was the only reasonable decision available in the circumstances. This decision was based on the obligation to run a safe and secure airport and was correctly taken by the CEO who is the CAA licence holder.
- The time taken to reopen the airport was reasonable given the extremely complex task of switching power supplies, restarting and testing systems, repositioning aircraft, repatriating crews and ensuring the safety of the airport and security of the UK border.
- There were no injuries as a result of the power outage and airport closure and the airport re-opened the following day.
Takeaways:
Response
- The need for an effective and well-practiced command and control system with clear notification, escalation procedures.
- Emergency notification systems should have a back-up method of alerting key staff out of hours and alternates must be identified to deputise for key leaders.
- The importance of well-maintained and resourced staff duty rosters that anticipate the need for response team shift patterns for an extended disruption. This must include Gold team commanders.
- The value of an operations room and the need for adjacent breakout spaces for response team meetings and sub-planning groups.
- The importance of support staff that are trained in the maintenance of a standardised incident log and record of decisions.
Communications
- The importance of timely and clear communications with stakeholders. This includes customers and supply chain partners.
- Regular engagement with key stakeholders and suppliers must be maintained throughout the disruption to support the decision-making process.
Preparation
- The utility of well-maintained contingency plans and check lists to aide decision making and provide easily accessible reference materiel.
- The value of regular training and exercising of response teams and key individuals and the need to record training competence achieved.
- Exercises should be used to explore key risks and include where possible key stakeholders and suppliers to validate plans and enhance mitigations for future possible events
- The importance of a well-maintained risk management process that can elevate and aggregate risks to senior leadership. This process should have mechanisms for ensuring horizontal cross functional information sharing to determine dependencies and optimise mitigations.
- Executive Management, Audit and Risk Committees and the Board have a role in periodically reviewing then risk of low probability, high impact events and single points of failure that could impact core outputs of the business.
- The importance of a register of critical systems, recovery times for critical activities and resilient alternate power (UPS, generators etc).
- The need for a robust continual improvements process to ensure lessons identified during an incident are learned and embedded within the organisation. Heathrow communications had learned and implemented many lessons from the 2010 snow event.
https://mediacentre.heathrow.com/pressrelease/detail/22887