At least 220,000 passengers have been left stranded in Britain and around the world after a fire shut Heathrow Airport for at least 24 hours – with Net Zero being blamed and the level of global travel chaos sparked by the outage being compared to 9/11.
The UK’s busiest airport was forced to close on Friday after its main electrical substation exploded and set alight less than two miles away in the west London suburb of Hayes.
The complete closure of Heathrow due to the loss of just one electrical substation is unprecedented and raises major questions for Heathrow and the Government. It has also left many stranded travellers raging and reduced to tears.
‘A contained version of 9/11’
Aviation consultant John Strickland said: ‘It’s a contained version of 9/11 or, to an extent, the Icelandic volcanic eruption. I remembered seeing on those occasions – particularly more so on 9/11 – it happened so quick and then US airspace was closed, they were turning back aircraft and holding planes’.
One industry source has claimed that Net Zero is to blame because Heathrow is moving from diesel back-up generators to biomass.
Reform MP Richard Tice said: ‘It appears that Heathrow had changed its backup systems in order to be, wait for it…Net Zero compliant’.
‘They had got rid of their diesel generators and had moved towards a biomass generator that was designed not to completely replace the grid but work alongside it. Their net zero compliant backup system has completely failed in its core function at the first time of asking’.
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