It's one of London's six airports, primarily used for discount holiday flights. Hardly safety-critical.
Besides, this is literally the first time ever it has reached temperatures this high - and it has been open for 84 years. I bet they also "failed to design" for hurricanes, cataclysmic floods, and volcanoes!
As I understand you are engineering for a range of temperatures with problems to be found outside either end of the range (though I imagine it’s also possible to engineer for wider or narrower ranges to some extent, with appropriate cost implications).
Coping with higher maximum temperatures means more cracking and damage at very low temperatures, so it is not necessarily a case of just building in more buffer at the top end but a trade off between the cost and frequency of events like this and the cost of dealing with the effects of winter.
Given that this had literally never happened before and the frequency of similarly hot events was also lower in the past, it’s perhaps unsurprising that the trade-off landed where it did, even if it may well be in for a rethink now.
When these designs were made, 40 °C in the UK was a once-in-5,000-years event. Now, it seems to be about 1 in 30 years (we don't have enough data to be sure).
Also, the problem usually isn't the 40-degree air temperature itself, because that's usually in the operating range--it's the rails and machinery and confined spaces hitting 60+ that fucks everything up.
New York considered shutting down its subways in July 2011 when it was "only" 40.5. Why? Because the underground stations were hitting 50, which (esp. in New York humidity) is dangerous for the most heat-sensitive people.
I'm sorry, but that's a whackadoodle approach to engineering. 40C is well within the range of expected temperatures, and the men who designed it failed epically. There have been heatwaves in the UK since 1911 where the temp approaches 40C.
I doubt it's a once every few decades event anymore. It got to 38 in several places in the country a few years ago. It seems to get up to the mid 30s every year now.
The problem is these temperatures are quite a bit higher than ever previously recorded, and go beyond the reasonable scenarios for which they were built. I’m sure sure newer UK infra is designed for higher temperatures but this is new territory and unfortunately probably just a taste of what’s coming.
Worth also adding this wasn’t as bad as it sounds- only a small patch was faulty and fixed within a few hours. For bigger problems see the various wildfires and also widespread breakdowns in chilled food storages. I also hate to think how barn animals are faring.
> The problem is these temperatures are quite a bit higher than ever previously recorded, and go beyond the reasonable scenarios for which they were built.
Exactly. I remember talk in the press about the default asphalt composition for the roads where I am (Romania) being changed to handle higher temperatures like 15 years ago. We're a lot more to the south and got warmer faster than the UK.
Besides, this is literally the first time ever it has reached temperatures this high - and it has been open for 84 years. I bet they also "failed to design" for hurricanes, cataclysmic floods, and volcanoes!