A fire at the North Hyde electrical substation in Hayes earlier this year triggered major disruption at Heathrow, forcing the airport to suspend all operations for nearly 16 hours.

The blaze knocked out both the main and backup power systems, resulting in over 1,300 flight cancellations and leaving nearly 290,000 passengers stranded.

The outage also affected tens of thousands of nearby homes and led to the evacuation of over 100 residents.

In response to the chaos, the government has launched a formal investigation into the resilience of critical national infrastructure.