Who is the CEO of Heathrow Airport? What is Thomas Woldbye salary and nationality - what has he said about airport's shutdown

He replaced John Holland-Kaye, who announced plans to quit in February 2023 as the airport dealt with industrial action from security staff. Holland-Kaye’s pay for running the airport in 2022 could be as much as £5.25 million, including £4.2 million worth of bonuses.

Woldbye ran Copenhagen airport for 12 years before becoming the CEO of Heathrow on 1 October 2023. The Dane – who was paid 12.3m Danish kroner (£1.4m), only slightly less than Holland-Kaye’s £1.5m package – oversaw about 2,100 staff while Copenhagen airport handled 22 million passengers and 500 flights a day. During his time at Copenhagen airport, which is part-owned by the Danish government, Woldbye oversaw the biggest expansion of its facilities and grew annual passenger numbers from 20 million to a pre-pandemic peak of 30 million over an eight-year period.

Woldbye grew up in Copenhagen’s northern suburbs, graduating from Kildegaards High School in 1983. From there he joined shipping company AP Moller Maersk as a management trainee, working his way up to group senior vice-president during a 27-year career. In 2011, Woldbye was hired as chief executive of Copenhagen Airports.

As CEO of Heathrow he was paid £3.2 million last year, including a £2.2 million bonus. He has seemed to deflect blame recently after the airport was shut down on Friday 21 March after 25,000 litres of cooling fluid caught fire at the largest of the three electrical substations that supply Heathrow.

The blaze began shortly after 11pm on Thursday. Woldbye, who had been at an event in central London, was called into action with the rest of Heathrow’s top team.

The airport was plunged into darkness, computers shut down and baggage carousels ground to a halt. Passengers had to use the lights on their phones.

He said: “We are sincerely sorry for the inconvenience that passengers have experienced. [But] the power substation is not part of Heathrow’s infrastructure. It is part of the electricity company’s infrastructure. So we were handling the consequences of that failure.”

Pressure is growing on the airport as passengers want to know why Heathrow chose to shut the airport when two of its terminals, T3 and T5, had most of their power. Sources said that National Air Traffic Services was “fully operational” with radar and aircraft management systems up and running for much of the day.

The chief executive of National Grid, John Pettigrew, also said Heathrow Airport had “enough power” from remaining substations despite the shutdown. Mr Pettigrew told the Financial Times: “There was no lack of capacity from the substations. Each substation individually can provide enough power to Heathrow.”

The chief executive of the electricity and gas utility company added: “Two substations were always available for the distribution network companies and Heathrow to take power. Losing a substation is a unique event — but there were two others available. So that is a level of resilience.”