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.
"[...] 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."
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.
While I agree with you, this is a huge issue with the term "security" and what it means to "provide security" as a government, because at some point almost everything can be labeled as a "national security threat" if it happens to be against the political desiderata of any one controlling said governments at a certain moment in time.
I feel like this sort of "security reflex" only got worst after 9/11, it was already there before even before that point but starting with Bush jr. it cascading into lots and lots of non-military related areas.
Amusingly, some media outlets confused the Scandinavian SAS airline with Britain's SAS Special Forces unit, and reported that the special forces unit had cancelled its trips out of Heathrow :) https://amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/live/2025/mar/21/hayes-s...
While I agree that saying this is a big national security issue is overstating it, if an adversary can cripple you economically because you have a few single points of failure, that is a national security issue
“National security, or national defence (national defense in American English), is the security and defence of a sovereign state, including its citizens, *economy*, and institutions, which is regarded as a duty of government.”
Whether mere incompetence from those whose job it is to check such installations for failure or bad actors, other 'bad actors' will have gained a useful indication of how vulnerable Britain’s infrastructure is to attack. It's reckoned > 290K passengers have flights cancelled or diverted and ensuring chaos for days.
Most militarily-significant targets are themselves non-military.
The Russian war of aggression on Ukraine is a prime example: power infrastructure, transportation, communications, commercial hubs, healthcare, and general civilian targets of opportunity are all targeted with high frequency by Russian forces.
UK national security interests are spelled out in summary beginning on page 5 of this PDF, "Government Functional Standard: GovS 007: Security", notably
Each organisation’s governance and management framework shall cover physical, personnel, cyber, incident management, technical and industry security
As an example of non-military focus, the present US national security policy leads with ... tourist visas:
To protect Americans, the United States must be vigilant during the visa-issuance process to ensure that those aliens approved for admission into the United States do not intend to harm Americans or our national interests.
An earlier document from the Bush II White House leads with:
People everywhere want to be able to speak freely; choose who will govern them; worship as they please; educate their children—male and female; own property; and enjoy the benefits of their labor.
Originally conceived as protection against military attack, 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.
> Most militarily-significant targets are themselves non-military.
Indeed. Large scale war is extremely expensive. Russia's government is spending about 40% of total tax revenue on invading Ukraine. So anything it can do to harm the economies of the people fighting it helps. Equally, this is why Ukraine has been putting so much effort into blowing up oil and gas infrastructure in Russia, their #1 source of tax revenue.
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 inside the M25 ring.
I used to live next to RAF Kenley, it's not really usable in any valuable way - it's a relic. It's for gliders only with no powered flight allowed. It has no facilities and is very uneven/roughly paved, but could probably accept landings of small planes or fighters in extremis. Biggin Hill would be used instead if you needed an airport in that immediate area.
> 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]
Does that count only the actual airport? It doesn't count the potential business travellers contributing to the economy in different ways. Like if half of the financial sector were due to arrive at Heathrow, where would that be in the analysis?
Just to downplay the importance of Heathrow through numbers is a bit absurd.
If half the financial sector is in the plane somehow, and they decide “oh, the airport has a power outage, better crash into the ocean instead,” that might make a major difference. More likely they will go land at a different airport or delay their travel, depending on there they are in the process.
You missed the parent's point, which is that a significant fraction of people flying to London because they have business to do in London, and the value of their time is not zero. If their time is wasted, that has a real cost in terms of lost productivity.
I've flown through Heathrow a dozen or so times, and have spent maybe $200 in various shops and restaurants. Outside the airport, I spent months working on projects, and both I and the projects involved much more than $200. An analysis that includes only direct spending misses the overall impact.
All right, but if Heathrow was down for a day, what would you do? Cancel the trip, and never go at all? Or would you go a day later, or through a different airport, or fly to Manchester and take the train?
Even if the airline let you, why would you travel to Manchester? That's half a day and a £100 train fare away from London. There's still Gatwick, Stansted and Luton in 'London', plus Cardiff, Birmingham and Bristol as alternatives.
If money were no object even Amsterdam Schiphol or Brussels would make for a faster journey than Manchester!
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
If we're going to be pedantic about fair comparisons, then really you would need to, for example:
Remove airport duty-free sales figures since that has a negligible effect on the UK economy, but does pad up their bottom line.
Remove leisure passenger derived numbers. Because "passenger tourism contributes to the UK economy" type data are very much finger in the air subjective estimates prone to bias and massaging. For example, common scenario is relatives coming to stay. They stay at your house, you feed them at your house, their net contribution to the UK economy is effectively naff all apart from maybe a couple of museum and transport tickets.
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 out of Gatwick just in case. Inconvenient, but not a massive problem.
What will be telling here is how quickly things adapt to the disruption. I expect to feel more impact from the loss of power to businesses in the surrounding area that are involved in air shipment than in the flight disruptions (e.g. cold chain logistics and inventory management for just-in-time processes that warehouse near the airport.)
> 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]
That link isn't working currently, and when I checked it earlier it was referring to an outage which started late yesterday night. So I'm not sure it was relevant.
> 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 the roof in recent years. Its becasue the grid simply cannot get the extra capacity to where it is needed. And this is before energy prices started rising due to the UK's electricity being mostly dependent on gas (previous governments having sold off gas-storage facilities to build houses on the land instead).
That's why its also a pain in the backside to build new banks of EV fast chargers anywhere in the UK. Getting the power there involves long, protracted, discussions with the grid followed by payments of large amounts of money and a written promise to the grid that you agree to load-shedding at any time if necessary.
I suspect you will find its not a single point of failure either. Its just that Hayes is a high-demand area, so see above for lack of excess capacity .... if one site goes boom, the other will struggle to take on 100% load.
> I suspect you will find its not a single point of failure either. It’s just that Hayes is a high-demand area, so see above for lack of excess capacity .... if one site goes boom, the other will struggle to take on 100% load.
Hayes (North Hyde) is a few miles NE of Heathrow, but Laleham (similar sized) is only a few miles South - I’d would have assumed both served as fully redundant supplies for the airport, given it’s critical national infrastructure.
(The old BBC Television Centre in London had three independent supplies, I believe)
> (The old BBC Television Centre in London had three independent supplies, I believe)
There's a story, possibly apocryphal, that the UK nuclear deterrent submarines used the continued broadcast of Radio 4 as a dead-man switch to determine if nuclear war had broken out and they needed to open the safe containing their orders.
Which is to say: What counts as "critical national infrastructure" can be surprising.
Radio 4 on long wave, I believe - which is only guaranteed until the end of June this year because the BBC’s stock of irreplaceable high power valves is running out. As well as triggering Armageddon the LW signal also switched older electricity meters (phew, back on topic!) between standard daytime and cheap overnight power.
So .. why are people trying to build new datacentre space in London rather than somewhere a bit further away and less expensive? Easier to put the datacentre near the power and run some fiber rather than the other way round, surely?
The expense is unpleasant, but the money has to come from somewhere, and the user paying is easier to justify than all the other bill-payers collectively or the taxpayer.
> why are people trying to build new datacentre space in London rather than somewhere a bit further away and less expensive?
Most likely some combination of:
1. A chunk of the customer base (financial sector, hyperscalers etc.) that wants the low latency and who are price insensitive because of their deep pockets.
2. If peering matters to you, then you're limited to where the IXP is, which is usually only at the major London sites. LINX, for example, have LINX Wales, but that is not interconnected with LINX London, so you either need to get space in London or pay for fibre capacity back to London.
3. Fibre coverage outside large conurbations in the UK has traditionally been shit and to varying degrees still is.
4. The rural areas don't have substations ready-to-go and the NIMBY's come running if you propose building one or anything else in their backyards (see protests about new wind farms).
Almost certainly many more things I've missed, those are just a few off the top of my head.
There are various locations outside of Central London but within the M25 boundary. But YMMV when it comes to being any less expensive. I suspect you will find the Outer London market has "hardened" over the last few years.
Verging into cynical territory, marketing might come into it a little bit. "Telehouse London" sounds cooler in the customer presentation "Telehouse near some village you've never heard of".
The UK has a weird National Grid system whereby the cost of electricity is the same nationwide (except Scotland)
So datacenters build in London as the connection/electricity price is same as building in rural areas and they'd obviously prefer being closer to users in London.
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.
"National security site" is not a synonym for "military installation."
It means "critical infrastructure whose failure causes significant adverse effects."
The UK's main airport is absolutely that.
Your quote about 99% of air cargo not coming through Heathrow is made-up nonsense. The correct figure is closer to around 50% by volume and 70% by value.
> 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.
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.
>Heathrow is a civilian airport, not a military one.
Not saying this incident is or isn't a national security issue, but this is not really pertinent to whether an incident is classified as a national security issue.
National security encompasses much more than just military-related stuff. The "security" part of "national security" is using a broad definition of security (like "food security" isn't strictly about physically protecting food from damage).
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
If by "national security issue" we mean "can the UK move military aircraft and important people" then no, Heathrow isn't key at all. There are other airbases and airports.
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".
Yeah well, not everything that annoys people and loses bussinesses money is a "national security issue", no matter how far the US overton window shifted on that matter.
What would you suggest as a backup? Supposedly they have generators/redundancy but the place requires so much power that that can only maintain critical functions (I guess ensuring incoming flights can still land and taxi in the mins after the power loss).
One potential solution is to add a connection to a second substation. For example, Laleham is a few miles south of Heathrow, and can be fed without sharing any infrastructure with North Hyde.
I doubt it's worth the additional expenses, though. Transformers exploding like this is extremely rare, and the main reason this one has such an impact is because the firefighting effort required the other two transformers to be shut down. Investing in better physical separation between the individual transformers is probably a way more effective investment.
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.
Yeah I munched the maths but yours is 10 years old!
The 2022 version of that sustainability report puts their annual bought in electricity at 272,610 MWh, 747 MWh per day.
My wonky maths aside, it's amazing how much energy they've saved. In your link, the switch to LEDs alone saw a 20% total power reduction. I'm sure I've seen electric vehicles there so I'm surprised this number is still apparently in freefall. Perhaps they're doing more local generation (eg) PV
While we're doing wacky units for energy instead of the joule, I'd personally prefer roughly 360 DeLorean's per day (assuming the 1.21 gigawatts are required for roughly 10 seconds)
Yup I think I missed a comma when originally reading the sustainability report. They buy-in an average of 747 MWh a day (2022).
The point I was stumbling to try and make was that Heathrow is dense. Just under a GWh a day delivered to a 1200ha site isn't going to get a natural diversity of supply, especially compared to a rail system does.
[0] suggests (without a useful link and my searching has not found one) that Heathrow is doing 460GWh annually. Presumably[1] that equates to 1.25GWh daily (which could be where the 1-2MWh/day came from - a simple unit error)?
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.