Heathrow bosses were warned its power supply was vulnerable less than a week before a major outage, and a terminal could have got some flights moving by mid-morning rather than being shut for a day, a committee of MPs has heard.
The chief executive of Heathrow Airline Operators’ Committee Nigel Wicking told MPs of the Transport Committee he raised issues about resilience on 15 March after cable and wiring theft took out lights on a runway.
Mr Wicking said he believed Heathrow’s Terminal 5 could have been ready to receive repatriation flights by “late morning” on the day of the closure, as “there was opportunity also to get flights out”.
A fire at an electricity substation in west London meant the power supply was disrupted to Europe’s largest airport for a day – causing travel chaos for nearly 300,000 passengers, the committee heard.
“I’d actually warned Heathrow of concerns that we had with regard to the substations and my concern was resilience”, said Mr Wicking, the head of a body representing more than 90 airlines using Heathrow Airport.
“So the first occasion was to team Heathrow director on the 15th of the month of March. And then I also spoke to the chief operating officer and chief customer officer two days before regarding this concern.
“And it was following a number of, a couple of incidents of, unfortunately, theft, of wire and cable around some of the power supply that on one of those occasions, took out the lights on the runway for a period of time. That obviously made me concerned.”
Other problems
The biggest challenge was getting information, Mr Wicking said.
The desire for information on the outage and closure was so large that a Teams call on the day of the closure was “maxed out” with “a thousand participants”, he added.
However, Heathrow chief executive Thomas Woldbye said keeping the airport open during last month’s power outage would have been “disastrous”.
There was a risk of having “literally tens of thousands of people stranded in the airport, where we have nowhere to put them”, Mr Woldbye told MPs.
Fire surveillance and CCTV systems were down as a result of having limited electricity, he added, meaning it would not have been safe to reopen.
‘The most expensive airport in the world’
Heathrow should have top quality infrastructure and service, Mr Wicking said.
“It is the most expensive airport in the world with regard to passenger challenges. So from our perspective, that means we should actually have the best service. We should have the best infrastructure,” he added.
Image: Aerials show burned substation which shut Heathrow Airport
A review on resilience at Heathrow was done in 2018, he told MPs, but was told it was “not for sharing” with airlines.
“I think it is for sharing now because frankly, we’re paying enough”, Mr Wickling said he told Mr Woldbye.
“I don’t feel that we should be paying more attention for further resilience. The resilience should have been there in the first place.”
The UK economy unexpectedly shrank in May, even after the worst of Donald Trump’s tariffs were paused, official figures showed.
A standard measure of economic growth, gross domestic product (GDP), contracted 0.1% in May, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
Rather than a fall being anticipated, growth of 0.1% was forecast by economists polled by Reuters as big falls in production and construction were seen.
It followed a 0.3% contraction in April, when Mr Trump announced his country-specific tariffs and sparked a global trade war.
A 90-day pause on these import taxes, which has been extended, allowed more normality to resume.
This was borne out by other figures released by the ONS on Friday.
Exports to the United States rose £300m but “remained relatively low” following a “substantial decrease” in April, the data said.
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Overall, there was a “large rise in goods imports and a fall in goods exports”.
A ‘disappointing’ but mixed picture
It’s “disappointing” news, Chancellor Rachel Reeves said. She and the government as a whole have repeatedly said growing the economy was their number one priority.
“I am determined to kickstart economic growth and deliver on that promise”, she added.
But the picture was not all bad.
Growth recorded in March was revised upwards, further indicating that companies invested to prepare for tariffs. Rather than GDP of 0.2%, the ONS said on Friday the figure was actually 0.4%.
It showed businesses moved forward activity to be ready for the extra taxes. Businesses were hit with higher employer national insurance contributions in April.
The expansion in March means the economy still grew when the three months are looked at together.
While an interest rate cut in August had already been expected, investors upped their bets of a 0.25 percentage point fall in the Bank of England’s base interest rate.
Such a cut would bring down the rate to 4% and make borrowing cheaper.
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Is Britain going bankrupt?
Analysts from economic research firm Pantheon Macro said the data was not as bad as it looked.
“The size of the manufacturing drop looks erratic to us and should partly unwind… There are signs that GDP growth can rebound in June”, said Pantheon’s chief UK economist, Rob Wood.
Why did the economy shrink?
The drops in manufacturing came mostly due to slowed car-making, less oil and gas extraction and the pharmaceutical industry.
The fall was not larger because the services industry – the largest part of the economy – expanded, with law firms and computer programmers having a good month.
It made up for a “very weak” month for retailers, the ONS said.
Monthly Gross Domestic Product (GDP) figures are volatile and, on their own, don’t tell us much.
However, the picture emerging a year since the election of the Labour government is not hugely comforting.
This is a government that promised to turbocharge economic growth, the key to improving livelihoods and the public finances. Instead, the economy is mainly flatlining.
Output shrank in May by 0.1%. That followed a 0.3% drop in April.
However, the subsequent data has shown us that much of that growth was artificial, with businesses racing to get orders out of the door to beat the possible introduction of tariffs. Property transactions were also brought forward to beat stamp duty changes.
In April, we experienced the hangover as orders and industrial output dropped. Services also struggled as demand for legal and conveyancing services dropped after the stamp duty changes.
Many of those distortions have now been smoothed out, but the manufacturing sector still struggled in May.
Signs of recovery
Manufacturing output fell by 1% in May, but more up-to-date data suggests the sector is recovering.
“We expect both cars and pharma output to improve as the UK-US trade deal comes into force and the volatility unwinds,” economists at Pantheon Macroeconomics said.
Meanwhile, the services sector eked out growth of 0.1%.
A 2.7% month-to-month fall in retail sales suppressed growth in the sector, but that should improve with hot weather likely to boost demand at restaurants and pubs.
Struggles ahead
It is unlikely, however, to massively shift the dial for the economy, the kind of shift the Labour government has promised and needs in order to give it some breathing room against its fiscal rules.
The economy remains fragile, and there are risks and traps lurking around the corner.
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Is Britain going bankrupt?
Concerns that the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, is considering tax hikes could weigh on consumer confidence, at a time when businesses are already scaling back hiring because of national insurance tax hikes.
Inflation is also expected to climb in the second half of the year, further weighing on consumers and businesses.
The government is speeding up its adoption of AI to try and encourage economic growth – with backing from Facebook parent Meta.
It will today announce a $1m (£740,000) scheme to hire up to 10 AI “experts” to help with the adoption of the technology.
Sir Keir Starmer has spoken repeatedly about wanting to use the developing technology as part of his “plan for change” to improve the UK – with claims it could produce tens of billions in savings and efficiencies.
The government is hoping the new hires could help with problems like translating classified documents en masse, speeding up planning applications or help with emergency responses when power or internet outages occur.
The funding for the roles is coming from Meta, through the Alan Turing Institute. Adverts will go live next week, with the new fellowships expected to start at the beginning of 2026.
Technology Secretary Peter Kyle said: “This fellowship is the best of AI in action – open, practical, and built for public good. It’s about delivery, not just ideas – creating real tools that help government work better for people.”
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He added: “The fellowship will help scale that kind of impact across government, and develop sovereign capabilities where the UK must lead, like national security and critical infrastructure.”
The projects will all be based on open source models, meaning there will be a minimal cost for the government when it comes to licensing.
Meta describes its own AI model, Llama, as open source, although there are questions around whether it truly qualifies for that title due to parts of its code base not being published.
The owner of Facebook has also sponsored several studies into the benefits of government adopting more open source AI tools.
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Minister reveals how AI could improve public services
Mr Kyle’s Department for Science and Technology has been working on its mission to increase the uptake of AI within government, including through the artificial intelligence “incubator”, under which these fellowships will fall.
The secretary of state has pointed to the success of Caddy – a tool that helps call centre workers search for answers in official documents faster – and its expanding use across government as an example of an AI success story.
He said the tool, developed with Citizens Advice, shows how AI can “boost productivity, improve decision-making, and support frontline staff”. A trial suggested it could cut waiting times for calls in half.
My Kyle also recently announced a deal with Google to provide tech support to government and assist with modernisation of data.
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Joel Kaplan, the chief global affairs officer from Meta, said: “Open-source AI models are helping researchers and developers make major scientific and medical breakthroughs, and they have the potential to transform the delivery of public services too.
“This partnership with ATI will help the government access some of the brightest minds and the technology they need to solve big challenges – and to do it openly and in the public interest.”
Jean Innes, the head of the Alan Turing Institute, said: “These fellowships will offer an innovative way to match AI experts with the real world challenges our public services are facing.”