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London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage

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Re: London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage

#31

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

izacus wrote: post #30
blindriver wrote: post #10

Seems like a national security issue if there’s a single point of failure a few miles away that can take down one of Europe’s largest airports and global air travel.

Heathrow isn't the only airport near London so redundancy is already built

Yes and no. The vast majority of commercial flights what would have landed at Heathrow today won't be landing at a different London airport instead. There isn't spare, redundant capacity for that. Instead the flights will be cancelled.

https://www.thelocal.dk/20250321/sas-cancels-flights-from-no...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly6e24q8glo

Re: London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage

#32

Post by apetresc »

traceroute66 wrote: post #29
blindriver wrote: post #10

Seems like a national security issue if there’s a single point of failure a few miles away that can take down one of Europe’s largest airports and global air travel.

> Seems like a national security issue if there’s a single point of failure No. Its not. Its the fact that the decades of under-investment in power distribution infrastructure is coming home to roost. Its no secret there's little to no "fat" in the UK grid system. Hence it has difficulty coping with black-swan events such as this. Anyone who buys datacentre space in London knows the reason prices have gone through th…

You keep saying “No it’s not” and then describing exactly what most people would call “a single point of failure” and “a national security issue” in a lot more words.

Re: London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage

#33

Post by traceroute66 »

apetresc wrote: post #32
traceroute66 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Seems like a national security issue if there’s a single point of failure No. Its not. Its the fact that the decades of under-investment in power distribution infrastructure is coming home to roost. Its no secret there's little to no "fat" in the UK grid system. Hence it has difficulty coping with black-swan events such as this. Anyone who buys datacentre space in London knows the reason prices have gone through th…

You keep saying “No it’s not” and then describing exactly what most people would call “a single point of failure” and “a national security issue” in a lot more words.

> You keep saying “No it’s not” and then describing exactly what most people would call “a single point of failure” and “a national security issue” in a lot more words.

What are you on about ?

Its not a national security issue. Full stop. There are many other airports in the London area and elesewhere in the UK. Heathrow is a civilian airport, not a military one. 99% of air cargo to the UK does NOT come to Heathrow.

Its not a single point of failure either. Sure, for those TEMPORARILY affected it might feel that way. But businesses with contingency plannign will simply invoke their DR plans and go elsewhere ... flights will divert, people will WFH instead of going the offices, people will have to travel to a supermarket a little bit further away.

Also, regarding "single point of failure", see this website[1]... 62,000 customers affected but only 4,800 without power[1]. Not quite a SPOF then is it !

Also, you want guaranteed N+1 resilience at grid level, who do you think is going to pay for that ?

Most people would be happy with the grid sorting out its capacity issues at N level, one thing at a time my friend.

[1] https://powertrack.ssen.co.uk/powertrack#QQ0573

Re: London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage

#34

Post by traceroute66 »

manarth wrote: post #5
viraptor wrote: post #2

It looks like there's a fair bit of redundancy there https://www.ukpowernetworksservices.co.uk/case-studies/heath... Sounds weird that one substation going down would close everything.

The substations decribed in the power network case study above are for local distribution – 33kV stepping down to 11kV (×2) and 11kV to 415V (x12). The substation on fire (North Hyde) is a 275kV major distribution substation. That's a fairly significant distribution loss in itself (not just Heathrow but also 16,000 homes), and rebalancing the distribution will need careful coordination – flipping the switch on a load…

> not just Heathrow but also 16,000 homes

You are off by a large number. More like 62,000 customers affected (although "only" 4,800 are actually without power right now)[1].

Also that area is more than just "homes". There is a lot of heavy elecrical load commercial stuff going on in that area too.

[1]https://powertrack.ssen.co.uk/powertrack#QQ0573

Re: London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage

#35

Post by traceroute66 »

evgen wrote: post #24
smashah wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heathrow is a significant part of the UK economy, what is with the dismissive attitude? I don't imagine an american being so dismissive about JFK being taken offline.

A significant part of the economy perhaps, but 'national security threat' is a somewhat higher bar IMHO. LHR has a role of convenience, but not necessity. If JFK was shut down for a day or two and had limited operations for another week it would be inconvenient but would barely register in the national economic stats. I am on a flight heading out of Heathrow on Sunday for work travel and have booked an alternative ou…

> What will be telling here is how quickly things adapt to the disruption.

Most people won't have to. The substation area covers 62,000 properties, but only 4,800 are actually without power as a result of the incident. In addition they are expecting restoration of power by 15:00 same-day.[1]

[1] https://powertrack.ssen.co.uk/powertrack#QQ0573

Re: London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage

#36

Post by hackerbeat »

benterix wrote: post #28
hackerbeat wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It might well be, but you don't have any proof of that. In Lithuania it took months of investigations to catch the culprits, analyze all evidence and make that statement. I can imagine in the UK it can take even more.

[flagged]

Re: London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage

#37

Post by traceroute66 »

smashah wrote: post #21
evgen wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Few people actually include necessary infrastructure into their threat model and almost no one is willing to pay the cost of building effective redundancy into the system. I could probably shut down any airport in the world with a few late-night firebombs tossed into the right substation. And no, it is not a national security issue. There are three other airports in the London region, plus RAF Norholt and RAF Kenly i…

Heathrow is a significant part of the UK economy, what is with the dismissive attitude? I don't imagine an american being so dismissive about JFK being taken offline.

> Heathrow is a significant part of the UK economy

Is it, really ?

From Heathrow's own website[1], so we can expect figures on the "generous" side:

"Heathrow Airport is expected to contribute approximately £4.7bn to the UK economy "

This incident started somewhere around midnight and is currently estimated to be resolved by 15:00. So let's round that up to "one day".

£4.7bn divided by 365 is £12.8m

Compared to say, the UK financial services sector which contributed £208.2bn to the UK economy in 2023[2] where an equivalent day out would cost £570m .... Heathrow's paltry £12m is equivalent to a 30 minute outage in the financial sector.

Also, to put it further into perspective - Tesco, the UK's biggest supermarket operator - had revenues of £68bn last year...[3]

[1]https://www.heathrow.com/content/dam/heathrow/web/common/doc... [2]https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn06... [3] https://companiesmarketcap.com/gbp/tesco/revenue/

Re: London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage

#38

Post by traceroute66 »

Devilspawn6666 wrote: post #19
gambiting wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all been privatized and they don't care about anything other than maintaing profits so of course we're seeing the effects now. It's also why every single water provider in the UK is dumping raw sewage into our rivers and when the government tries to make them fix it they cry about how that will eat into their profits and how it's unfair.

Nope... The UK electricity grid is nationalised - it's run by the National Energy System Operator (NESO).

> The UK electricity grid is nationalised

That is only a very recent change though, 1 October 2024[1].

Before that it was very much privatised, 1990–2024[2].

Technically in the background I suspect you will find very little has changed since October 2024 since (a) not enough time has passed (b) things like TUPE means you will end up with most of the same people doing the same things under a different logo, at least for a little while until changes get phased in.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Energy_System_Operato...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Grid_(Great_Britain)

Re: London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage

#39

Post by ChrisRR »

traceroute66 wrote: post #29
blindriver wrote: post #10

Seems like a national security issue if there’s a single point of failure a few miles away that can take down one of Europe’s largest airports and global air travel.

> Seems like a national security issue if there’s a single point of failure No. Its not. Its the fact that the decades of under-investment in power distribution infrastructure is coming home to roost. Its no secret there's little to no "fat" in the UK grid system. Hence it has difficulty coping with black-swan events such as this. Anyone who buys datacentre space in London knows the reason prices have gone through th…

How do you say No it's not and then describe points of failure leading to national security issues?

Re: London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage

#40

Post by izacus »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #31
izacus wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heathrow isn't the only airport near London so redundancy is already built

Yes and no. The vast majority of commercial flights what would have landed at Heathrow today won't be landing at a different London airport instead. There isn't spare, redundant capacity for that. Instead the flights will be cancelled. https://www.thelocal.dk/20250321/sas-cancels-flights-from-no... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly6e24q8glo

But that's not a national security concern. That's just an annoyance.

For national security London and UK can scramble several other airports for important flights.

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