Heathrow bosses were warned of potential substation failures just days before the airport was forced to close for a day after a fire sparked a major power outage, MPs have been told.

Nigel Wicking, the chief executive of Heathrow Airline Operators’ Committee, told MPs there were a ‘couple of incidents’ which made him concerned – including the lights on a runway being taken out.

Speaking in front of the Transport Select Committee, Mr Wicking also said he believed Heathrow’s Terminal 5 could have restarted departure flights by ‘late morning’ on the day of the closure rather than being shut for a day. 

On March 21, Heathrow was plunged into chaos after a devastating electrical fire forced the UK’s busiest airport to close for the day.

Some 270,000 passengers’ journeys were disrupted after the airport’s main electrical substation exploded and set alight less than two miles away in the west London suburb of Hayes. 

Heathrow is supplied by three substations, but knocking out one caused a huge power outage at the airport. 

The impact of the fire from a single power source has raised questions over Heathrow’s resilience and disaster plans, including from Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer who said he was ‘deeply concerned’ in the days after the incident.

Mr Wicking told the Transport Select Committee he spoke to the Team Heathrow director on March 15 about his concerns, and the chief operating officer and chief customer officer on March 19.

He said: ‘I’d actually warned Heathrow of concerns that we had with regard to the substations and my concern was resilience.’

Mr Wicking, head of the body representing more than 90 airlines using Heathrow, explained: ‘It was following 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.

Nigel Wicking (pictured), the chief executive of Heathrow Airline Operators’ Committee, told MPs of the Transport Committee said there were a ‘couple of incidents’ which made him concerned

Heathrow bosses were warned of potential substation failures just days before the airport was forced to close for a day due to a major power outage, MPs have been told. Pictured: The fire at Hayes electrical substation 

The smouldering North Hyde electrical substation which caused a power outage at Heathrow

‘That obviously made me concerned and, as such, I raised the point I wanted to understand better the overall resilience of the airport.’ 

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, and that ‘there was opportunity also to get flights out’.

But Heathrow chief executive Thomas Woldbye said keeping the airport open during the outage would have been ‘disastrous’.

He told the committee: ‘It became quite clear we could not operate the airport safely quite early in this process, and that is why we closed the airport.

‘If we had not done that, we would have had thousands of passengers stranded at the airport at high risk to personal injury, gridlocked roads around the airport, because don’t forget 65,000 houses and other institutions were powered down.

‘Traffic lights didn’t work, just to give you an example, many things didn’t work. Parts of the civil infrastructure didn’t work.

‘So the risk of having literally tens of thousands of people stranded at the airport, where we have would have nowhere to put them, we could not process them, would have been a disastrous scenario.’

On March 21, Heathrow was plunged into chaos after a devastating electrical fire forced the UK’s busiest airport to close for the day 

Pictured: Firefighters douse the remainder of a fire that broke out at a substation supplying power to Heathrow Airport in Hayes, west London

Mr Woldbye told the committee the substation which caught fire was ‘by far the biggest’ that served the airport, with a capacity of 70 megawatts.

Asked if some of the airport’s terminals could have reopened sooner, he said: ‘The fact that the lights were on at Terminal 5, which is entirely correct, doesn’t mean the terminal was operational.

‘We didn’t have all CCTV, we didn’t have fire surveillance. The fire systems would work… but the fire surveillance systems of the airport (were) down, so we didn’t know where the systems were up and safe.

‘All that had to be secured before we started operation.’

Mr Woldbye added: ‘I cannot guarantee you whether T5 could have opened an hour earlier.

‘We did all we could to get it open as soon as we could, because we fully understand the airlines’ concerns around getting repatriated flights, repatriated passengers, and also getting flights in there.’

Mr Woldbye said the airport has contracts with energy company Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks for ‘resilient power set-ups’, and ‘we have to rely on the contracts we have’.

A firefighter helps putting out a fire that broke out at a substation supplying power to Heathrow Airport on March 21

Heathrow chief executive Thomas Woldbye (pictured) said keeping the airport open during the outage would have been ‘disastrous’

He added: ‘Should we have further resilience? But that, of course, comes at a very high cost, and that is the discussion we have to have with airlines, because we cannot make investments without having airlines (agree to them).’

Mr Wicking responded: ‘We already pay enough for Heathrow. I don’t feel that we should be paying more for further resilience.

‘The resilience should have been there in the first place, frankly.’

Asked by the committee if the estimated 10 hours it would take to re-power Heathrow sounded resilient, Mr Woldbye said: ‘I think under an event like this one, which is as unlikely as has been described, that is the resilience that is in place. That is the playbook that is in place.’

Mr Woldbye told the committee there was ‘not endless, seamless switch-over for everything in the airport’ and that bosses were ‘still at a stage where we don’t know why it happened’.

Mr Wicking said: ‘Ten hours for me were too long, and actually the time it took to make the decision to go into the 10-hour process seemed too long.’

An investigation into the fire and outage was ordered by the Government, with initial findings to be provided within six weeks.