Heathrow total shutdown

'Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.'

Given the state of the UK I think Hanlon's razor is relevant here.
 
They've caught the culprit..

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Unless you're a kid of the 70's that pic will mean nothing.
 
SDK^ said:
Calm down !
I was referring to 'social media' not here :)

I'm 25 years working for National Grid and it's very interesting how people provide their insights/comments on how things 'should be done'
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It's always interesting when an industry you work in is in the news for some reason and you see the fantastically insightful opinions of the public at large
 
I know it was Comic Relief last night but some of the takes in this thread are actually hilarious.

But to answer the question how is Heathrow so reliant on one substation?

Well clearly it isn’t because they are running a near full schedule today.
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
I know it was Comic Relief last night but some of the takes in this thread are actually hilarious.

But to answer the question how is Heathrow so reliant on one substation?

Well clearly it isn’t because they are running a near full schedule today.
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Except they're not running a full schedule and if a single transformer going pop can cause such utter chaos then serious questions need to be asked.

To lose such a critical piece of infrastructure for even an hour has huge implications for safety, if nothing else.

If the UK had lost the use of another airfield yesterday i.e. Gatwick, which could happen for any number of reason both routine or otherwise, I suspect you would have had multiple mayday situations with incoming aircraft in relation to their fuel state.
 
esmozz said:
Except they're not running a full schedule and if a single transformer going pop can cause such utter chaos then serious questions need to be asked.

To lose such a critical piece of infrastructure for even an hour has huge implications for safety, if nothing else.

If the UK had lost the use of another airfield yesterday i.e. Gatwick, which could happen for any number of reason both routine or otherwise, I suspect you would have had multiple mayday situations with incoming aircraft in relation to their fuel state.
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Gatwick will not be the planned diversion for anything coming to Heathrow - it’s far too close and would be subject to the same issues that would cause diversions in the first place, such as weather.
 
Penfold101 said:
Gatwick will not be the planned diversion for anything coming to Heathrow - it’s far too close and would be subject to the same issues that would cause diversions in the first place, such as weather.
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Well, yes and no. The only requirement for a diversion field is that the weather to be forecast to be above a certain minima for an hour either side of the expected arrival time. There is certainly no lower limit on the distance. But you are correct, in that is possible or even likely that weather affecting one also affects the other, its also entirely possible the opposite is true, for example - low lying fog is often a consequence of the surrounding terrain and cold frontal weather systems can be quite narrow.

And whilst I can't speak to fuel planning into Heathrow as I've only been there twice but aircraft flying in Stansted will routinely use Luton as an alternate or into Manchester using Birmingham or Liverpool.

But even if it were true, incoming aircraft to Gatwick would be joining the queue of aircraft looking somewhere to go in the event of it closing as well and capacity in the UK and surrounding area is quite limited.
 
I think I heard that they generally have a stash of spare substations on hand due to the long lead times in having one built.

The idea being that if something goes wrong you can just switch it out. Has anyone heard this? Any idea if it’s true?
 
esmozz said:
Except they're not running a full schedule and if a single transformer going pop can cause such utter chaos then serious questions need to be asked.

To lose such a critical piece of infrastructure for even an hour has huge implications for safety, if nothing else.

If the UK had lost the use of another airfield yesterday i.e. Gatwick, which could happen for any number of reason both routine or otherwise, I suspect you would have had multiple mayday situations with incoming aircraft in relation to their fuel state.
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Heathrow says they're intending on running a full schedule but I'm sure you know better; up to the airlines I guess though and even if Gatwick had gone down there's plenty of UK airports or those just over the channel that would have taken diversions.

I don't really understand the safety thing, surely the safest thing yesterday was for Heathrow to full close while they sorted themselves out, they did have back-up power for critical systems like runway / taxi lights, etc but you can't run an airport on that alone.
 
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Will Gill said:
That advert used to scare the bejesus out of me :D
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Likewise. There was a kid in the town I grew up in who tried to retrieve a football from one of the smaller suburban transformer stations. It didn’t go well. He survived, but won the nickname Burnt Chicken for his stupidity which should give you some idea of how badly injured he was.
 
chrismscotland said:
Heathrow says they're intending on running a full schedule but I'm sure you know better; up to the airlines I guess though and even if Gatwick had gone down there's plenty of UK airports or those just over the channel that would have taken diversions.

I don't really understand the safety thing, surely the safest thing yesterday was for Heathrow to full close while they sorted themselves out, they did have back-up power for critical systems like runway / taxi lights, etc but you can't run an airport on that alone.
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I don't think you realise just how busy the skies over the UK are.
 
Chuk_Chuk said:
I think I heard that they generally have a stash of spare substations on hand due to the long lead times in having one built.

The idea being that if something goes wrong you can just switch it out. Has anyone heard this? Any idea if it’s true?
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Possible. We keep fully prepped distribution boards and panels in storage in case of emergencies. We also have some redundancy in our switch gear.
 
Chuk_Chuk said:
I think I heard that they generally have a stash of spare substations on hand due to the long lead times in having one built.

The idea being that if something goes wrong you can just switch it out. Has anyone heard this? Any idea if it’s true?
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Apparently in America they have "ready to go" substations of various sizes built onto HGV trailers as the lead time can be a year or more for the parts if something major happens, so they basically drive them from a depot to where they are needed and hook them up for a quick fix (so downtime might be days rather than weeks or months), but also for some planned works.

Some of the likes of the oil companies also have their own that they work with the power companies to put into use as it's cheaper and more efficient when they're doing work in reasonably remote areas to do a temporary connection to a nearby high power line for a large work site than keep shipping in fuel for large generators.
 
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