A fire has paralyzed Heathrow Airport in London. An expert explains what this means for all air traffic and passengers.
Heathrow Airport is the largest airport in Europe and the fourth largest worldwide. But on Friday there was a fire in a nearby substation that supplies the airport with electricity. This led to a significant power failure and the airport’s closure for the entire day.
This not only affects air traffic in London. Since Heathrow is an important turnstile and contact point for many flights from all over the world, this also has an impact outside of Great Britain. Ralph Beisel explains which these are and how critically the closure of such a large airport is. He is the managing director of the ADV Airport Association and says that the closure of Heathrow has also had an impact on air traffic. Almost 100 flights between a German airport and Heathrow take place every day. Part of the flights will be able to be redirected to London-Gatwick and London-Stansted.
“Nevertheless, the ADV airport association expects over 50 flights and around 9,000 affected passengers that cannot fly due to the power failure in Heathrow,” says Beisel. The ADV recommends that all passengers “contact their airline at an early stage and to find out more about flight status”.
But in addition to the failures and diversions, there is also a bigger, systematic problem. Beisel explains: “The incident shows that despite all precautions and redundancies, critical infrastructures are vulnerable. An airport cannot fully supply itself and rely on external supply networks.”
According to the future law on the protection of critical infrastructures in Germany (criticism roofing law) in particular, the networks of the networks have no influence on which operators of transport infrastructures themselves have no influence. “It is important to prevent economic damage from standstill.”
To do this, the law must also create the framework to support the operators financially and to enable the expansion of the traffic to be expanded. “The role of the critical infrastructure must not only be associated with duties for investing or reporting,” said Beisel.
The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and EASA in Europe determine the rules for the power supply of important airport systems. These rules are binding for airport operators and air traffic control. All important systems on the airport site must be secured twice. If the main power supply fails, a replacement system immediately steps in.
In addition to the international and European guidelines, there are their own rules for the power supply of airport terminals in Germany. Because terminals are considered public buildings, depending on the construction – emergency power systems must also be available for short -term power outages. The legal basis for this is the building law of the individual federal states. The binding regulations are in the so -called state building regulations. This also includes many technical standards and requirements for power supply.
The fire brigade has now contained the fire in Heathrow, but so far it is unclear when the airport can resume its operation. What exactly triggered the fire is so far unclear. Ed Miliband, the British Minister of Energy Safety, said in a radio show that the causes and the protective measures that are available for such a large facility as Heathrow have now been very closely viewed.
