Heathrow airport closed

Sparkchaser

The airport will be closed until at least 23:59 on 21 March, Heathrow said in a statement, but it warned customers to expect “significant disruption over the coming days”.

At least 1,351 flights to and from Heathrow will be affected on Friday, Flightradar24 said, with some 120 affected aircraft already in the air when the closure was announced.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1jp1dg7g45o

real_aurgathor

A critical, or I might even say super-critical infrastructure should’ve had a functional backup system to properly deal with a scenario like this.

Donoreo

real_aurgathor I am sure they have generators, but they do not want to operate without a backup. Ideally, something like an airport should have power supplied from two separate substations.

real_aurgathor

Donoreo

Yes,. that would be another possibility as long as there’s another substation in the vicinity.

Donoreo

real_aurgathor Data centres do it all the time, they pay to have the power run from another one.

px_eliezer_

The BBC understands that Heathrow does have back-up power for its key systems, but kickstarting these alternative power supplies for the whole airport takes time.

A source said it was not possible to switch the power back on immediately.

A Heathrow source also told the BBC that they have “multiple sources” of energy at the airport – with diesel generators and “uninterruptable power supplies” in place.

They added when the power outage happened the back up systems “all operated as expected”.

The systems, however, are not enough to run the whole airport – hence the decision to close it down.

From BBC article linked in first post.

Still and all, a bit surprising.

Not that anybody here in the USA or Canada should be complacent….

We’ve been through our own massive blackouts, more than once and much bigger.

Sparkchaser

px_eliezer_ Still and all, a bit surprising.

Certainly the question on everyone’s mind.

** " Aviation expert John Strickland tells BBC 5Live that there are backup systems in place for key systems, but stresses the scale of the challenge of keeping an airport moving.

“There are just so many systems at an airport used by so many different players, not only the airport itself and the airlines, but handling agents, engineering companies, catering companies, you name it”, he says.

“You could be talking about anything from switching on lights in a toilet to the far more serious stuff” he adds, citing “air traffic control functioning, aircraft manoeuvring around airports [and] baggage being loaded”

Despite this, Strickland suggests that the airport could “theoretically” do the minimum of landing an aircraft safely on its emergency systems.

And, he says the question about backup will be “the biggest topic of discussion once the dust settles”. " **

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cly24zvvwxlt?at_format=link&at_bbc_team=editorial&post=asset%3A371d646e-3134-4773-aa78-940c8b8b5b70#post

px_eliezer_

Sparkchaser

In December 2008, I was flying at night into Honolulu airport when the airport and the whole city blacked out, RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE of our landing.

I said to my wife, “Hey where’d the runway lights go?!”

The whole island was blacked out all night.

When we finally got into the airport terminal building, there were almost no emergency lights. Workers were using the light from their cellphones to provide illumination.

It was an interesting night to be sure, especially because Mr. Obama was staying on the island, this was just before he took office. A lot of security nervousness.

When we finally got to our hotel, had to schlepp our luggage up about 12 flights of stairs. Some nice German tourists helped us.

Donoreo

px_eliezer_ Some nice German tourists helped us.

This was done in the most efficient manner possible, I am sure 🙂

broknsymetry

I’m not sure how large airports mitigate power loss, but when I was at NAS Cecil Field in Florida all of our major systems had automatically switched backup generators. However, even though they were automatic, when lightning was within a 10 mile radius (which was just about every afternoon in the summer) we would go to each site (Radar, comms, PAR, tower and our building which housed the air traffic control center) and manually power up each generator so that there would be no delay in switching if necessary. The rest of the base could go dark but our air operations would continue. I’m sure that large commercial airports have similar and probably much better backup systems.

real_aurgathor

Sparkchaser “There are just so many systems at an airport used by so many different players, not only the airport itself and the airlines, but handling agents, engineering companies, catering companies, you name it”, he says.

“You could be talking about anything from switching on lights in a toilet to the far more serious stuff” he adds, citing “air traffic control functioning, aircraft manoeuvring around airports [and] baggage being loaded”

The usual approach to complex and big problems in Computer Science is to break it down to smaller, easier to solve problems, so instead of arguing the “the scale of challenge” because ““There are just so many systems at an airport used by so many different players, ” just decompose the problem to smaller parts and solve those individually.

For example, the landing lights mentioned by px. I’m fairly certain that they are computer controlled, so for continuous operation. the computer and its associated networking/connection gear have to have uninterrupted power – so they have to be on UPSs since bringing back everything online when a reboot is involved can take quite a bit of time. Bit the lights themselves (and major consumers of power) should be able to come back from a power outage in no time, so no UPS is needed for those. They just need to figure out the total power needed, and put in enough generating capacity that can be started in a few minutes.

Sparkchaser

broknsymetry I’m not sure how large airports mitigate power loss, but when I was at NAS Cecil Field in Florida all of our major systems had automatically switched backup generators.

Above my pay grade. WAY back when I worked for a living, the highest voltage I saw was line voltage and that
was to power the low voltage supplies.

I did go to Heathrow many times a year and I it’s hard to imagine powering it with a single point.

Sparkchaser

Wife’s home town is Limerick IE near Shannon. They got 6 flights diverted and saying they’re scrambling to find places for the passengers to stay.

broknsymetry

Sparkchaser Limerick

There once was a fire at Heathrow
Where many travel to and fro.
The planes in the air
Could no longer go there
Because the lights did no longer show.

Sparkchaser

broknsymetry Limerick

Very clever
😃

sempergoofy

Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport (the world’s busiest) suffered something similar December 17, 2017. Underground fire that took out the backup, too.

https://www.cnn.com/2017/12/17/us/atlanta-airport-power-outage/index.html

From December 2024 on the7-year anniversary of the outage.

For the chronically bored, the above TV station put together a 35 minutes streaming video from their archives of their news stories about the fire from that day/night.
https://www.11alive.com/video/news/history/archives/from-the-archives-the-2017-atlanta-airport-blackout-121717/85-9ac73156-2df3-4b8b-a462-a5b364bf5c1d

Some blogger analysis here about why it was so unnecessary to have happened.
https://blog.somax.com/could-the-atl-airport-power-outage-have-been-prevented

Sparkchaser

sempergoofy Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport (the world’s busiest) suffered something similar December 17, 2017. Underground fire that took out the backup, too.

Very interesting, thanks. I was surprised this morning when I looked at the busiest. Atlanta and Dubai. I thought Heathrow would be higher. I guess my perspective is clouded by ones I’ve been to. Like Heathrow, Schiphol, Geneva and of course Philly. Also a lot of Newark to Shannon route.

I never went through ATL very much.

Sparkchaser

Heathrow Airport says it is “fully operational” following yesterday’s closure from a power outage

Woldbye (Heathrow’s chief executive), is asked by Emma Barnett on the Today programme why such critical infrastructure appeared to depend on a single power source without an alternative.

He explains there is not a “single source” powering the airport, but three substations that Heathrow works with that power different areas.

Woldbye adds that the situation yesterday was “unprecedented” and considered a “major incident”. He says that the airport shut for hours and “not for days” while they tried to re-route the power supply.

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cly24zvvwxlt

real_aurgathor

Sparkchaser He explains there is not a “single source” powering the airport, but three substations that Heathrow works with that power different areas.

It’s hard to be certain without knowing the exact capacities of those 3 feeds, but with that many it should’ve been much easier to create a redundant infrastructure that could provide power if any one link goes down…..

WalterDnes

There’s speculation that this might be Russian sabotage, in return for British military support of Ukraine https://www.livemint.com/news/world/heathrow-fire-was-russia-behind-the-chaos-experts-sound-the-alarm-11742589108636.html