Heathrow airport chaos.

Was looking at flightradar24 to try and work out what they’re doing about diversions. It appears that, for the transatlantic flights at least, they’re sending them back to the point of origin. This is going to be interesting to watch. 

Depends how far over the water they are.

3 or 4 in to Glasgow already.

There’s a Delta on the way to Amsterdam.

Each airport will say how many they can accept and then they get scattered to wherever has space.

Not very resilient if losing one substation can take out the whole airport. Will somebody think of the shareholders!

Rather than a third runway, the place needs a fully redundant substation!

There's an Airbus A380 from Dubai to Heathrow heading up to Manchester in addition to the regular Dubai - Manchester flights. The usual morning arrival is currently in a holding pattern over Buxton.

Bloody hell, Manchester is going to be rammed!

Holding patterns everywhere...

The loss of one substation should cause problems like that. I think it's the fire that's the issue.

Some interesting decisions being made. Looking at you, flight from Dallas, that just parked up in Goose Bay instead of somewhere useful...

Am I the only one suspicious about the possible cause of a major fire at critical infrastructure? I know accidents do happen, but so does sabotage.

Fires happen, including at substations, remember one going up near my mum’s, made hell of a bang! But… national grid are saying this is unusual, not only has transformers been taken out, but also the back up generators. Does sound very suspicious 

If you wanted to sabotage it, you'd hit two substations so that even if the fires were sorted, there's a big chunk of airport that you couldn't supply power to very easily. Double whammy. I agree, fire is an uncommon failure mode for substations but it is possible.

Its all the electric cars being plugged in to the lamposts that's overloaded the transformer.

Maybe 

Posted by: captain_bastard

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not only has transformers been taken out, but also the back up generators.

Where has that been announced? Although that would make me less suspicous about sabotage vs an inadequate backup plan/maintenance/test approach. Heard a few "fun" stories from IT hardware people about the UPS not quite working as hoped when there is a proper outage including in one case making things rather worse.

To vary Onzadogs suggestion if it was sabotage I would be going after second substation but near Gatwick, Stansted or one of the other airports to really screw things up.

Posted by: dissonance

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To vary Onzadogs suggestion if it was sabotage I would be going after second substation but near Gatwick, Stansted or one of the other airports to really screw things up.

A mate works in IT with critical infrastructure and he's said many times that if the general public actually knew how "on the edge" most stuff was most of the time, there'd be absolute panic. 

Got to be the Russians 🫣

Well that Ukraine peace deal was only for Putin not attack any Ukrainian energy infrastructure.....

conspiracy theories aside workmate was due to fly from LHR home to see family in Poland for first time in over a year so she'll. be gutted 

I doubt it's sabotage. Would have been easier and more impactful to attack the primary substation at the next voltage up.

The distribution network was privatised and run for profit decades ago. I used to get chastised for not following the "lowest cost, technically acceptable" mantra when I would run out extra cables on an install so that future expansion didn't mean switching loads of people off.

If major European airports start closing, where are the US authorities going to get their steady supply of visitors to detain, strip and torture?

Posted by: Martinhuutch

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where are the US authorities going to get their steady supply of visitors to detain, strip and torture?

Simple, just remove citizenship from anyone who fails to worship the emperor.

From a safety point of view, the timing of the fire could have been a lot worse. As it is, only long haul flights that arrive just before opening at 6am (there’s about 20 are authorised to land pre 0559) have been effected. As it happened so early on into those flights, the aircrew would have had plenty of fuel and time to work out their diversion plans.

If this had happened during the day, with all the long haul AND short haul traffic holding, there would have been a lot more “squeaky bums”.

The backup generation capacity was in the substation? Having been involved in IT Disaster & Recovery planning for a bank 30 years ago, I find this frankly incredible. We had backup generators for the backup generators. 😂

Another fine example of corporate incompetence not having a viable backup power supply. I thought these big companies were supposed to be run by clever people to justify their huge salaries

Posted by: chrismac

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I thought these big companies were supposed to be run by clever people to justify their huge salaries

No, they're run to the lowest possible cost by clever people who then use that "saved" money to pay their huge salary!

I've always wondered about whether ANY forethought or joined up thinking goes into airport planning. Thinking of Manchester in particular, but most of them seem to look like something cobbled together by an eight-year-old in Sim City. 

Posted by: chrismac

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Another fine example of corporate incompetence not having a viable backup power supply. I thought these big companies were supposed to be run by clever people to justify their huge salaries

I was in the Stansted powercut that happened last year and I think they had a similar issue.  Certainly the corridor I was stuck in for 3 hours (with approx 3000 other people!) was not lit other than the battery powered emergency lighting.

Posted by: ScotRoutes

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The backup generation capacity was in the substation?

Ok that is genius. I was expecting more just they hadnt been tested/maintained vs that.

Posted by: ScotRoutes

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We had backup generators for the backup generators. 😂

That costs lots of money though. Better spent on corporate bonuses after all how often will it go wrong?

Instead of having a third runway, other airports should be given greater capacity and more priority for rail travel within NE Europe. Too many eggs, too few baskets...

@martinhutch

I always thought South Gloucestershire Council had exclusive rights to SimCity for any sort of planning or design.

😉

Posted by: Martinhuutch

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I've always wondered about whether ANY forethought or joined up thinking goes into airport planning.

It's quite rare (in this country especially) to just build a new airport though. It's all expansion and tacked on extras and refurbishment. Heathrow was memorably described decades ago as the only building site in the world with its own airport.

Then you get new aircraft like an A380 coming into service and the whole gate and baggage and security system needs upgrading to cope with the extra size of the thing plus the additional passengers... Add in extra flights generated by the budget airlines, all of them running super-tight turnarounds, that's a load more passengers that were never forecast.

It's one of many reasons why a third runway at Heathrow is a terrible idea; nothing in the surrounding area can cope with the additional load. It's worse because most transport hubs see enormous peaks and troughs. There's very little for an hour, then 500 passengers come through the same 2 corridors to one baggage reclaim and all want taxis, trains, buses. Then another lull, then 20 minutes later another surge of 200 people in one go. 

Blackrod industrial estate near Bolton, which isn't massive, has SEVEN backup generators - Heathrow is a joke, probably every other airport in the UK - running on the edge 'because it will never happen'

The thing with sabotage is, if you hit multiple targets simultaneously, it is clearly a planned attack. This is plausibly deniable. And the Russians always deny everything anyway.

And if it wasn't sabotage this time, I bet they're been given a good idea.

You don't have backup generators in substations, it's part of the distribution not generation system. If there are diesel generators they will be to power the safety critical control equipment during an emergency and will be fairly low capacity as a result. I'd hazard a guess they are actually more likely to be battery powered UPS systems than diesel powered.

I AM a power station engineer, (although mechanical, not HV). 

Somone at Heathrow has done a piss poor job at disaster planning. The most major transport hub in the UK and there is only one electricity supply!!

JSO boys and girls up to their high jinx again?

Mr Antonov; do you really expect us to believe that you and your friend Mr Markov have really flown in yesterday because of a desire to visit Hayes noteworthy 13th century parish church and nearby manor house?

BBC now reporting anti-terrorism Police now involved 

See it is the Russians

Does this mean the M25 nearby will be quiet? 

I'm driving down to the south coast soon... Every little helps

Remember it’s closed at j10 A3, all weekend from 9pm…

Remember that the M25 is closed a few junctions south of Heathrow from tonight until Monday morning

Leaving West Yorkshire now

Hopefully be at Newhaven ferry by 7:30pm

See it is the Russians

Or someone is looking for a really convenient way to cover their arse.

Or someone is looking for a really convenient way to cover their arse.

I wouldn't put it past them, but we're a string independent nation perfectly capable of ****ing things up on our own.

Two thoughts spring to mind.

When you hear hooves, think horses, not zebras.

And

Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence 

Posted by: FunkyDunc

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BBC now reporting anti-terrorism Police now involved 

 

See it is the Russians

Could be, although strategically probably daft - nothing will get brits more irate than 24 hrs of travel disruption, probably be petitioning Starmer to launch nukes by Monday!

But there are probably enough other people around who might want to highlight the over reliance on air travel, huge power requirements of an airport, particular dependence of the U.K. on one single airport etc that it is not inconceivable that this is politically motivated without being Russian!

Posted by: elshalimo

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Hopefully be at Newhaven ferry by 7:30pm

On which day?

😉

No idea if it's related but I've just arrived at Manchester Piccadilly station and the police presence is mental. Armed police everywhere. Sniffer dogs. Walls of staff checking tickets as we got off the trams. Definitely feels like heightened security

Dognappers hon

Shared in Plymouth xoxox

Heathrow have said the backup system worked. I hadn't realised substations are full of oil. Seems likely the bigger problem was the column of thick smoke in the area?

Well if terrorism is the cause then they have inconvenienced the wrong people 😆 

https://twitter.com/DavidWilding271/status/1902988770430869738

I'm seeing more information on this now. Seems it's off site at Hayes, not actually at the airport. National Grid Transmission have made comment and the fire brigade have quoted 25000 litres of oil. All that suggests that it's a grid supply point at the root of this. Could still be "natural causes" and bad luck, but it's a much more substantial piece of infrastructure than I first thought.

I hadn't realised substations are full of oil.

Large transformers use it as an insulating media and it's circulated through large radiators for cooling. 

£534 + VAT for a 205 litre drum delivered. 😁

The reality is a peice of metal probably fell off a plane on final approach and shorted out some hv cables.

Or , the local yoof do what they do , or used to near Basingstoke. Whenever there was a big footy match they would launch iron bars at the local sub station and it would go bang.  Till they got caught 

The Russians! 

that is all.

known to be responsible for several warehouse fires across Europe and I believe may have been fingered as most likely suspects for a Uk one.

Tin hat on 

Posted by: Matthew Hornby

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Large transformers use it as an insulating media

Never mind the Russians, it sounds like the Decepticons did it!