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Heathrow Airport defends its decision to close the airport amid blame games

Heathrow Airport in Britain defended the decision to close Europe's busiest international airport on Friday, as the blame-game intensified following an 18-hour shutdown that cost airlines millions of pounds and left thousands of passengers stranded.

National Grid and Heathrow both agreed that this was a rare event.

The airport had to defend the closure of the airport after the head of National Grid told Financial Times that there was still enough power in the network to keep the airport powered throughout the crisis.

Heathrow reported that the fire in a nearby power substation on Thursday night forced it to close its operations while they reconfigured their systems and switched over to an alternate substation.

Heathrow's spokesperson stated that "hundreds of critical systems throughout the airport had to be safely shut down, and then safely and systemically rebooted."

Heathrow is a large airport with a complex operational structure. Restarting safely operations after an interruption of this magnitude was no easy task.

John Pettigrew said that there are two more substations capable of supplying power to Heathrow. This shows the grid's resilience.

He told the FT that two substations are always ready for Heathrow and the distribution network companies to use.

Heathrow and the government have both ordered reviews to determine what happened. British Airways was the worst affected airline, but the cost of the closure is borne by all airlines.

Heidi Alexander, Transport Minister, told Sky News Monday that it was important to learn from the mistakes made.

Alexander, when asked on LBC Radio if she has confidence in Heathrow CEO Thomas Woldbye said that she wants to see the results.

Heathrow Airport is a privately owned company. Its owners include the French investment group Ardian as well as Qatar Investment Authority, Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund and others.

(source: Reuters)