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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
Is there going to be a replacement bus service for the flights?
> https://thewest.com.au/travel/perth-to-london-flight-diverte...
> Perth Qantas customers who had their flights diverted from London to Paris after a massive power outage at Heathrow Airport will be put on buses to take them to take them to their final destination.
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.
Grid power is hard. Even with local generation failovers for air and ground safety systems, Heathrow is massive and uses a lot of power (1-2MWh/day). It's hard to route around that sort of demand.
I don't disagree that this is something that shouldn't happen, but that's what we say for almost every preventable grid failure. I think this is a national inconvenience rather than a security issue though. There are short-term alternatives which will be used.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
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.
Haven't they seen Die Hard 2?! /s Grid power is hard. Even with local generation failovers for air and ground safety systems, Heathrow is massive and uses a lot of power (1-2MWh/day). It's hard to route around that sort of demand. I don't disagree that this is something that shouldn't happen, but that's what we say for almost every preventable grid failure. I think this is a national inconvenience rather than a secur…
That number doesn't seem that high, compared to a single high-speed train running at about 300kph or above. Or lets say all of the London Tube/DLR.
Seems like nothing, actually.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
If we mean that a long outage would have economic impact and is hard to find the capacity elsewhere, then yes. As per grandparent post "take down one of Europe’s largest airports and global air travel".
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.
You'll need to back up that assertion.
I imagine any American who thought about it would have a similarly 'dismissive' attitude.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.…
Not even slightly true - Heathrow carries over 50% of air freight and is a major hub.
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.
Military airports are working fine. National security doesn't rely on civilian airports. And communications networks aren't disrupted or anything. This isn't enabling terrorism.
It's absolutely a huge economic issue. Economic-political. But I'm not seeing a national security angle here.