Who owns Heathrow Airport - what has CEO said about shutdown after National Grid claims airport had power access during meltdown

The power loss was caused by a blaze at an electricity substation in Hayes, west London, late on Thursday. London Fire Brigade deputy commissioner Jonathan Smith said: “The fire involved a transformer comprising 25,000 litres of its cooling oil fully alight.

“This created a major hazard owing to the still live high voltage equipment and the nature of an oil-fuelled fire. It is not currently known what caused the blaze.

The Metropolitan Police said they are not treating the incident as suspicious, although the force added that inquiries are ongoing. Following that confirmation from the Met, the London Fire Brigade announced its investigation will focus on the electrical distribution equipment.

Heathrow chief executive Thomas Woldbye said the airport has three substations, each with a back-up transformer. The fire broke out at one of the three substations where the back-up transformer also failed, causing a loss of power to Heathrow.

Mr Woldbye said the airport can run on power from the two unaffected substations but had to “restructure the supply”. He said: “So, we’re not out of power but we have to restructure our power supply. To do that we have to close down systems – that is safety procedure, we will not go around that.”

However, now, the chief executive of National Grid, John Pettigrew, 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.”

In response to the comments, a Heathrow Airport spokesperson said: “As the National Grid’s chief executive, John Pettigrew, noted, he has never seen a transformer failure like this in his 30 years in the industry. His view confirms that this was an unprecedented incident and that it would not have been possible for Heathrow to operate uninterrupted.

“Hundreds of critical systems across the airport were required to be safely powered down and then safely and systematically rebooted. Given Heathrow’s size and operational complexity, safely restarting operations after a disruption of this magnitude was a significant challenge.”

Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has ordered the National Energy System Operator to “urgently investigate” the power outage caused by the substation fire, and is working with Ofgem and using powers under the Energy Act to formally launch the grid operator’s investigation. The National Energy System Operator (Neso) is expected to report to the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and Ofgem with initial findings within six weeks.

Who owns Heathrow Airport?

Heathrow is owned and operated by Heathrow Airport Holdings. Heathrow Airport Holdings was formerly part of the FTSE 100 Index and was formed after Margaret Thatcher privatised it and made it BAA plc.

The Spanish company Ferrovial, which specialises in the planning, building, financing, running, and maintaining of transport, urban, and service infrastructure, led a consortium that acquired BAA plc in 2006. BAA plc also owned Gatwick Airport but sold it to Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), an investment fund, for £1.51 billion in 2009.

It also sold Stansted Airport to the Manchester Airports Group for £1.5bn in 2013, making Heathrow its only remaining airport over the years that followed. In order to better reflect its primary operation, BAA changed its name to Heathrow Airport Holdings in 2012.