Heathrow chief has ‘extra loud phone’ after sleeping while fire unfolded

Heathrow’s boss said he has obtained an “extra loud phone” after sleeping through multiple calls when a decision was made to close the airport because of a power outage.

Chief executive Thomas Woldbye was asleep as his senior staff decided to suspend operations because of a fire at a nearby electrical substation.

No flights operated at the west London airport until about 6pm on March 21 because of the blaze which started late the previous night.

A Heathrow-commissioned inquiry led by former transport secretary Ruth Kelly found Mr Woldbye was not woken by alerts sent to his mobile, which was on a bedside table, because it had gone into silent mode “without him being aware”.

Asked at the Airlines 2025 event in Westminster if he had since obtained an “extra loud phone”, Mr Woldbye replied: “Oh, absolutely. And more.”

He said he was “personally devastated” by his phone being on silent, describing it as a “technical glitch”.

But he added that “nothing in this world should be depending on me alone” and “all the right people were there to take the right decisions”.

More than 270,000 air passenger journeys were disrupted by the incident.

Mr Woldbye said businesses “need to be able to trust our utilities”, and we are “not in a country where everybody needs a back-up”.

He added: “The Neso (National Energy System Operator) report made it very, very clear there were major failures on the part of National Grid and they should have been fixed.

“We should not have been in that situation in the first place.”