Airlines could face higher charges to fund new system at airport, which was affected last week by substation fire

The embattled chief executive of Heathrow has said that it could cost about £1bn to install a more resilient power supply system to prevent a repeat of the outage that shut Europe’s busiest airport last week, and warned that airlines could end up paying higher charges to help fund it.

Thomas Woldbye, who has been criticised for going to bed on the night of the crisis so he could be “better rested” to handle the fallout the following day, has said he was frustrated the incident occurred and would like to have handled it better.