If this wasn't executed by the FSB, then they're at least furiously taking notes.
London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage
61–70 of 260 posts
Re: London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage
#62Seems 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.
It's not looking good and the other alternative airports in the UK are at full capacity:
"Heathrow Doesn't Know When Power Will Be Back, Days of Disruption Expected" - https://www.newsweek.com/heathrow-airport-fire-counterterror...
If the entire transformer is lost, procuring replacement transformers for substations can take from several months to years. Insulation failures are relatively common in older power substations. It seems someone should have done a better job preparing disaster recovery scenarios for Heathrow.
Edit:
BBC reporting "some power" restored on a "interim basis" as the power company is now using a different substation. It would be curious if the increased effort on other substations would then cause further power failures...A bit like the postmortems of global cloud providers, where taking a node out, causes increased stress on other nodes...
Re: London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage
#63Earlier 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.
Getting bailed out by the government because you ran it into the ground is the plan when you buy one of these assets.
Privitise the profits, socialise the losses. Makes perfect sense.
Also makes sense to pay for enough brainwashing to enable this.
Re: London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage
#64Earlier 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. 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.…
> 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. ( https://www.heathrow.com/company/cargo )
> Heathrow carries over 50% of air freight and is a major hub.
Not denying it, but it does depend on what you're sending.
For example, if you send something by DHL, it has a significantly greater chance of going through East Midlands Airport than it does Heathrow.
Same for UPS and others. The bulk of their recent investments have been away from Heathrow.
The non-Heathrow sites have better road connections, and more importantly for air cargo, the noise abatement rules at non-Heathrow sites are more relaxed.
The other problem with Heathrow is that BA have their finger in the pies and they have too many slots, so that limits any growth on the independent freight side.
Heathrow has effectively hit its capacity limit. That may or may not change if they ever build the third runway.
Re: London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage
#65This is way worse due to London airports' lack of spare capacity. They should have built Thames Estuary Airport a long time ago.
Re: London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage
#66Seems 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.
Why would it be a national security issue? 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.
"[...] national security is widely understood to include also non-military dimensions, such as the security from terrorism, minimization of crime, economic security, energy security, environmental security, food security, and cyber-security."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security
Large-scale issues that impact the economy are typically under the "national security" umbrella. It's a term that uses the broad definition of "security".
Whether this incident qualifies, I don't know, but "national security" is definitely not just about military stuff. Just like how "food security" isn't about physically protecting food from damage.
Re: London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage
#67They didn't have enough solar panels on the roof?
You joke but make a good point, most major installations have backup diesel powered generators to provide power for a certain limited but generous time.
What happened with Heathrows generators? Did they kick in? Do they have any?
Edits: yes they did kick in as normal https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/heathrow-ed-miliband-nati...
Note that usually backup generators are only for essentials like air traffic control, landing lights, and operating emergency stuff.
Re: London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage
#68Earlier 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.
> 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, t…
Thats not really a fair comparison. Youve compared an entire industry to one entity within an industry. Id be interested to see what the numbers would be if you shutdown all commercial UK airports for a day. Still smaller I'd imagine, but at least comparable
Re: London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage
#69Seems 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.
It's not looking good and the other alternative airports in the UK are at full capacity: "Heathrow Doesn't Know When Power Will Be Back, Days of Disruption Expected" - https://www.newsweek.com/heathrow-airport-fire-counterterror... If the entire transformer is lost, procuring replacement transformers for substations can take from several months to years. Insulation failures are relatively common in older power substa…
One would hope the utility would have a spare transformer or two sitting around, I guess that’s not guaranteed tho. MV and HV transformers have extremely long lead times like you said.
Re: London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. ( https://www.heathrow.com/company/cargo )
> Heathrow carries over 50% of air freight and is a major hub. Not denying it, but it does depend on what you're sending. For example, if you send something by DHL, it has a significantly greater chance of going through East Midlands Airport than it does Heathrow. Same for UPS and others. The bulk of their recent investments have been away from Heathrow. The non-Heathrow sites have better road connections, and more i…
> Not denying it
Your original post did though!
Heathrow undoubtedly does the most air cargo. Sure express often comes into EMA on dedicated flights, but lots of freight comes in the hold of passenger aircraft, and that’s where Heathrow is king. The lack of passenger traffic is undoubtedly a key reason why EMA only does 1/5th of Heathrow’s air cargo, as as you have noted it’s ideally located to serve a lot of the UK.