Grounded: The crisis comms lessons from the Heathrow shutdown

More than 270,000 disrupted air passenger journeys.

That’s just one of the remarkable statistics from the turbulent closure of Heathrow airport.

Europe’s busiest airport was plunged into full crisis media management mode after it suffered a power outage because of a fire at a nearby electricity substation.

Around 234,000 passengers booked to fly to or from Heathrow had their flights cancelled, diverted or delayed on the day of the closure.

And a further 36,500 people hoping to travel the following day – when the airport described itself as fully operational - were also impacted when 74 flights were cancelled as aircraft and crews were out of position.

As crises go, it is a big one.

But what crisis communication lessons can you learn from it?

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Heathrow seems to have got a lot right.

But three main areas have sent the airport’s reputation into a tailspin.

And it starts with the CEO and his forty winks.

Yes, this is the part of the story that has been the focus of much attention after it emerged in a Sunday Times article that Heathrow boss Thomas Woldbye went back to bed in the early stages of the crisis.

According to the publication, which has worded it in a way that suggests the information was leaked, the decision was made for “safety reasons”.

It reported: “Heathrow insiders said the decision for Woldbye to go to bed was taken for safety reasons. The big decision was not whether to shut the airport, but when to reopen. Ensuring the person at the top was well-rested to make clear decisions was paramount, they said.”

A Heathrow spokesperson has said that protocols were followed so Mr Woldbye “and his whole senior leadership team, were exactly where they were supposed to be during an incident of this scale”.

But ‘going back to bed’ became a story that travelled far and wide.

Additionally, LBC presenter Nick Ferrari called for the boss to resign after the sleep revelation emerged.

He said: “He needs to go. He’s hopeless. He’s turned an airport and the nation into the laughing stock of the world.”

Now that’s what I call turbulence.

I’ve worked on enough major incidents to know that splitting the gold command is common in large-scale crisis media management responses. Managing a crisis is exhausting, and leaders need rest to make the right decisions.

So, there are question marks about whether the criticism and focus on the boss going to bed is justified. 

But optics matter, and it doesn’t look good to a public who know little about gold structures and crisis management strategies. What they know – and what they will remember – is that the boss went to bed while his deputy decided to close the airport.

Mr Woldbye has recently said he went to bed before the incident happened and that "somebody gave me a call which somehow did not go through".

Whether the bed story was caused by a leak, poor message discipline or over briefing, it remains a challenging narrative for Mr Woldbye, to move away from.  

If he is going to achieve it, he will need to do better in media interviews than he did during one I heard.

I haven’t caught all of his appearances.

But there was a ‘no comment’ response to being asked if he should keep his job during a Radio 4’s Today programme interview - the day before ‘bedgate’ broke – that made me take note.

“No comments to that,” he said.

It’s not a good response and made work easy for headline writers.

You can’t afford to say ‘no comment’ in a media interview. It sounds defensive and can be seen as an admission of guilt or weakness.

It also surrenders any control of the interview.

What I find fascinating about Mr Woldbye saying it here is that the question is predictable.

Bosses leading crisis responses are asked all the time about the security of their positions and whether they should resign.

I’ve asked it during many interviews carried out during our crisis communication training courses because it is a question journalists always ask outside of the safety of the classroom, no matter how unjustified some people seem to think it is in this instance.

So, it should have been a question he was prepared to handle with a better answer.

Maybe he was tired. Perhaps he would have benefited from a mock interview with our new AI training companion, Thirty Seven.

Another intriguing aspect of this crisis has been the emergence of a blame game.

There are a lot of players involved in this crisis, and the story took another twist when the boss of the National Grid told the Financial Times the airport had enough power to stay open.

John Pettigrew said that two other substations serving Heathrow were working throughout the incident.

“There was no lack of capacity from the substations,” he said. “Each substation individually can provide enough power to Heathrow.”

He said it was a “question for Heathrow” why it took the action it did.

Those comments were almost immediately picked up by all other media.

Mr Pettigrew’s remarks came after the Heathrow boss appeared to try to blame the power industry for the crisis, telling the BBC the airport would assess if it needed “a different level of resilience if we cannot trust that the grid around us is working the way it should”.

The airport hit back by saying: “‘As the National Grid's chief executive, John Pettigrew, noted, he has never seen a transformer failure like this in his 30 years in the industry. His view confirms that this was an unprecedented incident and that it would not have been possible for Heathrow to operate uninterrupted.”

It’s all a bit ugly and a far cry from the joined-up messaging needed in crisis media management.

Of course, different organisations all have their reputations to protect. Emotions can run high. And keeping everyone happy can be challenging as the crisis heat rises.

But the blame game is dangerous in crisis communication for all those who get swept up in it.

Finger-pointing keeps the story at the top of the news agenda. It’s a fascinating spectator sport. We all love a bit of trouble. Scapegoats are newsworthy.

But all this impacts trust.

The audience will be divided between those who believe the airport and others who feel National Grid has a point.

There’s already plenty of speculation about what went wrong – ranging from one journalist blaming engineers for working from home (while reporting from home) to other commentators blaming net zero – without two major organisations getting into a public spat.

Heathrow’s website says its vision is to be “an extraordinary airport fit for the future”. Achieving that will need more resilient infrastructure and better crisis communication.

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