Power vacuum: Heathrow's crisis in the dark

In partnership with

Dear reader,

How can I not cover Heathrow this week...✈️

In this edition of the Wag The Dog newsletter, I cover the power outage that left both Heathrow's terminals and its communication strategy in the dark.

Whether you're handling communications for a multinational or a local company, there are golden lessons here about what to do (and definitely not to do) in a crisis.

Pour yourself something nice and settle in for this week's case study.

Table of Contents

• The three-day meltdown: a timeline

• The silent treatment: a communications analysis

  • 1. The critical first hours

  • 2. The challenge of consistent communication

  • 3. The human element

  • 4. Digital infrastructure considerations

  • 5. Communication posture

• Contextual considerations: the regulatory framewor …

• Reflections for communication professionals

  • 1. Connect crisis planning with risk assessments

  • 2. Information gathering affects external communic …

  • 3. Authority frameworks enable timely response

  • 4. Digital readiness matters

  • 5. Balance technical and human elements

• Reflections on impact and context

• References and further reading.

• Sponsor

• What I am reading/testing/checking out:

The three-day meltdown: a timeline

Thursday, March 20th, 2025, 11.23pm: A fire starts at an electrical substation in Hayes. The London Fire Brigade responds with ten engines. The flames produce enough smoke that nearby residents are told to close their windows. About 5,000 homes lose power.

Early Friday morning: Heathrow suffers what it calls a "significant power outage." The first 120 inbound flights divert to airports across Europe and North America. Some simply turn back to their departure points.

What happens next—or rather, what doesn't happen—will be studied in public relations courses for years to come.

Heathrow posts a single tweet.

As thousands of passengers wonder what is happening to their travel plans, the airport falls silent. No urgent news section appears on its website. No spokesperson turns up on breakfast television. Nothing.

Throughout Friday, the silence grows as Heathrow remains completely closed. By day's end, 1,351 flights have been cancelled, affecting up to 291,000 passengers. Airlines frantically reroute aircraft to Frankfurt, Paris, Amsterdam, Madrid, Shannon, Newark, Washington, Toronto, and Atlanta.

The information vacuum widens. Media reports rely heavily on airline statements rather than Heathrow communications. Passengers at terminals and those stranded globally receive fragmentary updates, mostly from third parties.

Late Friday: After the London Fire Brigade contains the blaze (seven hours after it started), a few flights manage to land and take off from Heathrow. The airport confirms operations will remain suspended until midnight.

Saturday morning: Heathrow declares itself "fully operational" and deploys hundreds of extra staff to terminals. The airport increases its flight schedule to accommodate an additional 10,000 passengers.

Saturday throughout the day: British Airways operates approximately 85% of its scheduled flights while airlines scramble to reposition aircraft and crews.

Sunday: Heathrow's chairman, Lord Paul Deighton, orders an internal investigation into the airport's crisis management plans and response. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband demands that the National Energy System Operator "urgently investigate" the electrical substation fire, with findings expected within six weeks.

Monday: As the blame game intensifies, National Grid claims Heathrow had "enough power" despite the shutdown. Heathrow responds that the incident was "extraordinary" and that "uninterrupted operations would have been impossible."

The silent treatment: a communications analysis

Based on publicly available information, Heathrow's initial response appears to have fallen short of crisis communication best practices. While internal factors unknown to outside observers may have influenced their approach, the evidence suggests missed opportunities for more effective public engagement.

The limited early communication from the airport created a situation where other voices filled the information gap. This potentially transformed what was already a serious operational challenge into a more complicated reputational problem.

Let's examine what appears to have happened, recognising that those working behind the scenes were likely facing extraordinary challenges:

1. The critical first hours

Crisis communications literature emphasises the importance of early response—the first hours after a crisis breaks when an organisation can help shape public understanding. Based on media reports, Heathrow's communication during this period was limited to a single tweet. Without additional context or regular updates, this approach was insufficient for the scale of the situation.

2. The challenge of consistent communication

Modern crisis communication typically benefits from regular, consistent updates, even when there is little new information to share. Media reports suggest there were extended periods without official communication from Heathrow.

While the communications team undoubtedly worked hard behind the scenes, the public result appeared to be information gaps that created uncertainty. Periods of silence can sometimes be interpreted negatively, even when they result from teams working diligently to gather accurate information before communicating.

3. The human element

As the crisis continued, there appeared to be limited visibility of the people managing the response. According to news reports, CEO Thomas Woldbye didn't appear on camera until Saturday—after the most acute phase of the disruption.

The human element of crisis response can be valuable in these situations. Seeing the actual people working to resolve issues—from engineers to terminal managers to front-line staff—often helps affected individuals understand the scope of the effort under way.

4. Digital infrastructure considerations

According to media reports, Heathrow's website didn't feature a prominent urgent-news section during the crisis. For passengers searching for official updates, this may have made finding authoritative information more challenging.

In crisis situations, websites and drak sites serve as critical information hubs. Having emergency information architectures ready to deploy can be a valuable component of crisis preparedness.

5. Communication posture

When more detailed communication from Heathrow emerged, some observers characterised the tone as somewhat defensive. CEO Woldbye explained that the backup power system "functioned as intended" but was "insufficient to support the entire airport."

This statement raised questions about infrastructure planning: if the backup systems had known limitations, perhaps this highlighted opportunities for future resilience planning rather than representing a failure of the current system.

Contextual considerations: the regulatory framework

An interesting dimension to this crisis emerges when we examine it in the context of Heathrow's regulatory environment.

Just months before the substation fire (December 2024), Heathrow had submitted its response to the Civil Aviation Authority's Draft H8 Method Statement (CAP3044), which would govern the airport's regulatory framework from 2026 to 2031.

In this document, Heathrow highlighted several infrastructure and governance considerations that appear relevant to understanding the March 2025 incident:

1. Infrastructure investment challenges: The airport noted concerns about historical underinvestment in certain critical systems, including energy infrastructure.

2. Regulatory framework considerations: Heathrow suggested that aspects of the "single till" framework might create disincentives for capital investment in certain resilience measures.

3. Capital governance complexities: The document described governance structures that could potentially affect the speed and flexibility of investments in smaller but important systems—including those that might relate to power redundancy.

4. Stakeholder coordination: Heathrow discussed the need for "collective accountability" across various stakeholders, acknowledging the complex interdependencies that exist in airport operations.

What's particularly noteworthy is that these points, raised in a regulatory context, appear to have some relationship to the challenges experienced during the March crisis. This suggests that some of the vulnerabilities were recognized within the system before they were tested by real-world events.

Reflections for communication professionals

Without claiming to have all the answers or understanding the complete context of decision-making during the crisis, we can still extract some thoughtful considerations for communication professionals:

1. Connect crisis planning with risk assessments

Organizations will benefit from directly connecting their crisis communications planning with formal risk assessments and regulatory submissions. When vulnerabilities are identified in one context (such as regulatory filings), they can inform scenario planning for communications.

The Heathrow situation suggests value in reviewing organizational documentation that identifies potential risks and using these to build specific communication response plans.

2. Information gathering affects external communication

The apparent delays in Heathrow's external communication highlight the importance of internal information flows during a crisis. Organizations should consider establishing emergency information pathways specifically designed for crisis situations.

This is not to suggest that Heathrow didn't have such systems, but rather that the publicly visible outcomes suggest an opportunity for all organizations to examine how quickly and effectively they can gather verified information during emergencies.

3. Authority frameworks enable timely response

Crisis communications benefits from pre-established authority frameworks that allow communication teams to act quickly. While respecting necessary approval processes, organizations should consider defining parameters within which communications professionals can operate during crises without requiring multiple approval stages.

The timeline of Heathrow's communications response suggests potential value in examining decision-making processes during crisis situations.

4. Digital readiness matters

The reported absence of an urgent-news section on Heathrow's website during the crisis highlights the importance of digital infrastructure in crisis response. Organizations should have pre-built digital crisis architectures that can be rapidly deployed.

This includes considering how websites, social channels and other digital properties can quickly adapt during emergency situations.

5. Balance technical and human elements

When communicating about infrastructure failures, there's often a tension between technical accuracy and human empathy. The most effective crisis communications typically balance explaining what happened with acknowledging the human impact.

In Heathrow's case, later communications focused on technical aspects of the power systems. While this information was important, balancing it with recognition of passenger experiences might have been beneficial.

Reflections on impact and context

It's important to acknowledge that improved crisis communications would not have prevented the substation fire or instantly restored power to Heathrow. The operational challenges were substantial and required technical solutions that no amount of communication could replace.

Nevertheless, more robust communication might have meaningfully improved the experience of the approximately 291,000 affected passengers.

We should also recognize that crisis responses happen under extraordinary pressure. The teams at Heathrow were managing complex technical problems, coordinating with multiple stakeholders and working under intense time constraints. Judgments made from the comfortable distance of retrospective analysis should acknowledge these challenging realities.

As the various investigations unfold² , they will likely examine both the technical infrastructure issues and the communication aspects of the response. This presents a valuable learning opportunity for all organizations responsible for critical infrastructure.³

For communication professionals, the message is both challenging and clarifying: in moments of operational crisis, effective communication becomes essential. When physical systems fail, human connection through clear, consistent communication becomes even more valuable.

The Heathrow situation reminds us that we should prepare for these moments with humility about the difficulties involved and commitment to continuous improvement in our own preparedness.

References and further reading.

1  Nadeem Badshah. (2025, March 24). Airlines could take legal action over Heathrow shutdown. The Guardian; The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/mar/24/airlines-could-take-legal-action-over-heathrow-shutdown‌

2  IATA Comment with Respect to Heathrow Closing on 21 March 2025. (2025). Iata.org. https://www.iata.org/en/pressroom/2025-releases/2025-03-21-01/

3  News, I. (2025, March 23). Heathrow Airport returns to normal as investigations ordered into power outage. ITV News. https://www.itv.com/news/2025-03-23/heathrow-airport-returning-to-normal-as-investigations-ordered-into-power-outage

Sponsor

Need a personal assistant? We do too, that’s why we use AI.

Ready to embrace a new era of task delegation?

HubSpot’s highly anticipated AI Task Delegation Playbook is your key to supercharging your productivity and saving precious time.

Learn how to integrate AI into your own processes, allowing you to optimize your time and resources, while maximizing your output with ease.

Get the free guide here.

What I am reading/testing/checking out:

• Article: What Is PR Really For? A Call to Rethink Its Role in Society - by Neville Hobson (on his new blog/website).

• Tool: Kumu, a free tool to do stakeholder-, community-, social network mapping and more.

• Book: Wicked Problems: What can we do in this Time of Collapse? by Christian Sarkar and Philip Kotler

• Essay: (maybe you’ve missed it on LinbkedIn): The Human Factor Blind Spot: Why Technical Excellence Isn't Enough in Crisis Response

Let’s meet!

PS: I hope you've enjoyed this newsletter! Creating it each weekend is a labour of love that I provide for free. If you've found my writing valuable, the best way to support it is by sharing it with others. Thank you for reading!

_{Parts of this newsletter were created using AI technology to draft content. In addition, all AI-generated images include a caption stating, 'This image was created using AI'. These changes were made in line with the transparency requirements of the EU AI law for AI-generated content. Some links in this newsletter may be affiliate links, meaning I earn a small commission if you click and make a purchase; however, I only promote tools and services that I have tested, use myself, or am convinced will make a positive difference.}