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Heathrow shutdown shows the value of supply chain resilience
29th August 2025
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Any airport shutdown is fairly momentous, but interruptions at Heathrow have a bigger impact than most. The closure of the world’s fifth busiest airport due to a substation fire caused a backlog of flights across the world— diverting, delaying, and cancelling flights for both passengers and freight, and costing millions in economic damage.
The incident is just the latest in a long line of disruptions to global supply chains. In a world where disruption from wars, tariffs, and political wranglings are increasingly everyday occurrences, this is just the latest signal that we need to build greater resilience into supply chains—from transportation and tracking to the humble warehouse.
What happened at Heathrow
The complete shutdown of Heathrow airport was caused by a transformer failure due to a fire at a nearby substation. A report into the fire has found that it was caused by moisture entering high voltage cable insulation, which led to arcing which started the fire. The blaze damaged the main transformer at the site and also affected the backup transformer, causing a total loss of power to both Heathrow and homes in the area. Backup power sources kicked in as expected, but these were only enough to power critical systems which would allow planes to land safely in an emergency.
As such, all incoming planes to Heathrow were forced to divert unless absolutely necessary, such as due to a fuel emergency or a mechanical issue. This meant flights destined for Heathrow were largely diverted to other UK airports, while flights connecting through Heathrow ended up elsewhere in Europe. There was a similar picture for freight, causing delays that will likely have led to lost perishable goods, and delays to important shipments.
The end result was that 1400 flights were impacted by the fire, with millions of pounds in losses across passenger and freight traffic. The only comparable incident in recent memory was the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland in 2010, although this was far more dramatic and wide-reaching, affecting traffic across Europe across a six-day airspace closure. Nevertheless, serious questions are being asked about how one substation failure could bring down such a key artery of traffic.
The age of disruption
The impact of sudden traffic shutdowns such as this can be substantial for the logistics sector. Air transport is a key link in the chain, particularly for an island nation like the UK. Airports have in some cases become more reliable—and thus more heavily used—than seaports, with airports sometimes having more space and resources to dedicate to post-Brexit processing than ports, which often have strict space limitations. This has been most evident in Dover, where capacity is still lacking by many accounts, and vehicle traffic can be sent elsewhere in the county for processing.
At the same time, this is far from the only disruption we have seen in recent years. Brexit has changed the game in this regard, and has built a new level of resilience into businesses and the logistics sector as a whole. Yet as with anything, there may be a level of complacency in the current situation. Having dealt with the worst effects and absorbed the full ramifications of new customs policies, the resilience and redundancy that existed during the worst periods may not exist today.
The height of the Brexit chaos saw a huge surplus of goods being stored, with warehouses expanded and new permanent or temporary space bought or rented to do so. Other measures were also put in place to provide redundancy in the case of border delays, with local alternatives being sourced, different methods of transport being employed, or EU branches and other solutions being set up to better facilitate cross-border trade. While these problems haven’t disappeared, they have decreased in severity, and some of this investment in resilience has been reversed.
The cost of cuts
This has happened in spite of the way the news appears to be trending. Even as the spectres of Brexit and COVID have receded, the last few years have seen a succession of geopolitical issues, from wars and trade wars; to supply issues for commodities as varied as eggs and microchips. Much as ‘the new normal’ was coined to describe the oddities of the pandemic, the new normal might be a world in which instability is a predictable aspect of logistics.
This doesn’t mean it’s sensible or viable to spend aimlessly on redundancy, and anticipate the worst case scenario. But ‘bad case scenarios’ do seem like an increasingly foreseeable reality. The losses incurred by the pandemic and previous issues which were difficult to prepare for may have encouraged businesses to find cost savings in the years since. In some cases, this may have meant pulling resources out of pandemic-era contingencies.
This seems fairly logical. But what may be coming is a point of reckoning for how much redundancy is necessary. The Heathrow shutdown shows that the airport needs to be better prepared for sudden disruption. But it’s also a reflection of the realities of modern logistics. The massively interconnected nature of global supply chains means that one broken link can cause serious delays and disruption—something that is only likely to continue in a period of ongoing political instability.
Reviving resilience
So how can we harden supply chains, and build this resilience? One option is through emerging technologies. For as much as it is vilified, AI may have a valuable role to play in improving not just tracking and reporting, but also predictive analysis. Data modelling may help to better understand and predict issues such as the impact of climate change on weather patterns, and the disruption these can cause to freight traffic. Further optimisations could be made to distribution centre throughput and last-mile deliveries, ensuring that the most controllable aspect of perishable storage is fully optimised.
Another is through some of the measures put in to mitigate previous disruption. Additional warehouse capacity can allow for stockpiling where feasible, while partnering with 3PLs can help to offset risks, and benefit from local expertise. What’s crucial is that these changes don’t need to come at immense cost, or apply only in limited scenarios. Many optimisations can free up capacity to better adapt to changing circumstances. Warehouse optimisations such as the use of more efficient pallet racking systems, the installation of multi-tier racking or mezzanines to occupy unused headroom, and warehouse redesigns can all help to better optimise storage and throughput, making improvements today and for the future.
The same can be true for exploring emerging technologies such as warehouse robotics, driverless vehicles, AI integrations, and even drone deliveries. All of these technologies are avenues for potential optimisation that warrant consideration rather than caution. As much as it may seem like a time to hold back on investment, the right investments—in resilience, in productivity, in innovation—can be a bulwark against a less certain economic climate. The longer companies forgo investment in themselves, the more vulnerable they may be to further economic shocks, and the more difficult it will be to make those investments.
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That a substation fire can shut down such a key airport will clearly worry both officials at Heathrow and the UK government. But the event shouldn’t be taken in isolation as a blind bit of misfortune. It’s a reminder that things can go wrong at the drop of a hat, and that you need strategies to deal with this.
This will only become more of a truism as time passes, and the mini-crises of the past few years rumble on. The new normal may be a less stable global economy and logistics industry, but this doesn’t need to be cause for concern as long as you’re prepared for it, and build resilience throughout your supply chain.
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