Heathrow’s outage raises questions about Britain’s resilience
If a fire at a substation can knock out Europe’s biggest airport, what about a Russian attack?
AS THE FIRE blazed, planes were grounded and hundreds of thousands of passengers waited, a question rang out: deliberate sabotage or humdrum system failure? The substation fire that shut Heathrow for most of March 21st turned out to be the latter—prompting a blame game between the airport and Britain’s electricity-system operator. (Heathrow’s chairman, Lord Deighton, also chairs The Economist Group)The ease with which such havoc was caused raises questions about the country’s resilience in an increasingly dangerous world.
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