Moment flustered Heathrow boss REFUSES to say if he should quit over 18-hour shutdown that left 200k passengers stranded
THIS is the moment the boss of Heathrow was asked if he should quit over how the airport had dealt with the chaos caused by a substation fire.
Flights resumed at the west London airport following hours of closure after a blaze knocked out an electricity substation in Hayes late on Thursday evening.
Heathrow Airport’s chief executive Thomas Woldbye was pressed on how he had handled the crisis this morning.
Presenter Emma Barnett asked Woldbye on Radio 4 if he should remain in his role following yesterday’s closure.
“No comments to that,” Woldbye, whose salary is believed to be around £5million a year, said on the Today programme.
Barnett replied: “What do you mean no comments to that?”
Woldbye responded: “I’ll let others judge that if they think it is an issue.”
She then asked: “When we know more about the information and what caused it and how it was handled?”
He said: “Yes.”
Woldbye also told the BBC he’s “proud” of how the airport responded to the incident.
He said the power substation is not part of Heathrow’s infrastructure, but he added that he is “sincerely sorry” for the disruption.
He said: “We were handling the consequences of that failure. Heathrow uses as much energy as a city every day.”
Sir Gavin Williamson, the Tory former defence secretary, said: “This is a colossal failure of Heathrow airport.
“They have failed to build in the resilience that is required to ensure this level of disruption does not happen.”
It comes as British Airways warned all customers will be delayed today.
BA, which has a major presence at Heathrow, was the worst affected by yesterday’s shutdown.
The airline said it expects to operate around 85 per cent of its scheduled flights at the airport on Saturday.
It would usually expect to run nearly 600 departures and arrivals on Saturday but it is understood cancellations will be made, where possible, to high-frequency routes.
A spokesman said: “We are planning to operate as many flights as possible to and from Heathrow on Saturday, but to recover an operation of our size after such a significant incident is extremely complex.
“We expect around 85 per cent of our Saturday Heathrow schedule to run, but it is likely that all travelling customers will experience delays as we continue to navigate the challenges posed by Friday’s power outage at the airport.”