The response to the recent power outage at Heathrow Airport has lessons for crisis management in the public transport sector
Heathrow Airport CEO Thomas Woldbye
The power outage at Heathrow Airport a fortnight ago was fascinating in the way that it shone a lens on CEO Thomas Woldbye’s reaction to the crisis and his leadership approach. It was the kind of major disruption scenario that not infrequently occurs in the rail and, to an extent, bus and coach sectors.
I’m undecided on Woldbye’s management of the escapade. Quite often, situations like this force folk into taking a binary view of how the person at the top dealt with an incident – it was either very good or abominable, but in this case, it’s not clear cut at all. The trigger was a freak, off-site failure in a power station off Heathrow Airport premises, owned and managed by an external organisation. The British public relish finding a culprit to heap opprobrium on – a faceless power company in a run-of-the-mill west London suburb doesn’t have the appeal of a large, wealthy airport with a highly remunerated board or famous airlines whose customers were disrupted.
Faced with finger-wagging interviews on television, Woldbye’s response was eyebrow-raising. He had to navigate a way through gently reminding viewers that might be seeking a glamorous narrative that it was Heathrow Airport’s fault, that it wasn’t. He also had to show he appreciated the stress and financial loss felt by customers and avoid admitting that Heathrow’s contingency plans could have been better. It was a scenario that even the best media training would have struggled to prepare for.
Where Woldbye erred was too soon and instinctively in his response turning the spotlight on his pride at how his staff had managed the situation
Where Woldbye erred was too soon and instinctively in his response turning the spotlight on his pride at how his staff had managed the situation. Radio phone-ins I listened to in the aftermath were full of callers incandescent about his use of the word ‘proud’, and with selective hearing, they didn’t want to listen to all the other stuff he said about the crisis. How could the word ‘pride’ be used with a calamity that caused misery for over 300,000 and a big dent in the London economy? It was a red rag to a bull. It wasn’t helped by suggestions that he went to bed on the night of the crisis, nor his ‘no comment’ response when asked if he should resign.
I see parallels with the rail industry and where the response to a crisis of managers and staff of all levels is to bandy around headlines of pride at how everyone performed. This trench-like, ‘we were all in it together’ talk always alienates inconvenienced and out-of-pocket customers and creates a two-fingered ‘them and us’ feeling. It’s as though the priority is all about ‘the railway family’ of which customers are on the outside. I’ve been involved as a manager in many disruptions in transport and have seen firsthand, both this ‘going the extra mile’ (to utter another glib soundbite) and resilience from folk, but also a lot of chaotic, energy, huffing and puffing, bereft of polish and with results that aren’t as effective in terms of customer outcomes as we might think they are. All this rushing around, sweat and emotion tends to mask a lack of proper contingency planning back at the ranch and in the cut and thrust of the action, and indeed the aftermath, the industry loses sight objectively as to whether the service they provided was genuinely acceptable for customers. When normal service resumes, it’s sometimes challenging to ask industry folk to do the tedious and occasionally embarrassing stuff of committing to a proper, ‘cold light of day’ review of customer outcomes.
It comes down, as it often does, to self-awareness and the kind of stupidity that leads to managers of some of the worst performing train operating companies in the UK to regularly post on social media their pride for their ‘amazing team’ and great organisation, when these kind of comments are just a red rag to a bull for long-suffering customers. What, by the way, constitutes an ‘amazing team’? An article for another day.
On the one hand, Woldbye, was, I’d contest, on firmer ground than your average senior leader at a relegation-zone transport company, despite popular opinion having reservations about the ongoing campaign for a third runway. Performance at Heathrow Airport tends to be good and relatively free of negative headlines, and the majority of customers have an experience that is superior to that of many other airports, particularly given the large customer volumes. Queues through security are generally slickly managed, staff across the airport are smartly attired and customer-focused, information updates are timely and high quality, and facilities are stylish and elegant. Furthermore, public transport access to the airport, is excellent.
However, an alternative view of Heathrow belies the sparkle and glam, and it’s not unreasonable to see why Woldbye’s comments aggravated many. Due to high access charges levied on airlines, airfares from Heathrow are exorbitant compared to other UK airports. Many customers tend to feel that Heathrow’s priority is to suck as much money from customers as possible in retail outlets that have a higher mark-up than High Street equivalents, whilst trading on the negligence towards cost control that inflicts customers when they have just embarked on ‘holiday mode’ (of which my wife is a prime culprit). Almost all of the brands at the airport are high-end, and there’s no real sense that there will be a Poundland in my lifetime at Heathrow – or any airport for that matter. Although many major UK rail stations are now lavish, modern and stylish facilities, there’s still something for everyone regarding price and taste – let’s hope that continues.
Woldbye was demonised – not helped by those who felt he fitted the typical CEO mould at a time when ordinary folk were suffering – a very well-paid, older, middle-aged bloke, talking in corporate platitudes
Woldbye was demonised – not helped by those who felt he fitted the typical CEO mould at a time when ordinary folk were suffering – a very well-paid, older, middle-aged bloke, talking in corporate platitudes, representing a foreign company owning a famous UK institution. Part of the problem is that senior business leaders can seem dislikeable to your average body in the street, even if they are pleasant people, as I’m sure Woldbye is. The general public takes an instant dislike to these apparent stuffy-talking, lavishly remunerated fat cats, spewing out anodyne, wooden soundbites.
Senior managers can be really unrelatable. As I’m in the twilight of my career, I regularly remind myself of the times as a young person in the transport industry, the disdain I had when doing junior roles, sitting at my desk and watching these suited and booted jumped-up leaders swagger into the office, chuntering among themselves with serious looking faces and turning their noses down at those they ignored in the corridor. Maybe it was with a hint of envy, but I often think about how I felt back then and how myself and colleagues used to slag these people off as soon as they sauntered out of the building and then realise that probably that’s probably what the younger generation are doing now still and why top brass are no doubt as unpopular as ever, or more so. Many make it worse by trying to emulate the legendary business leader from just up the road from Heathrow in Slough, David Brent, with a ‘down with the kids’ approach, which backfires. Woldbye will have unfairly suffered because of all the ills of CEOs and the like over the years.
Woldbye’s admission of going to bed as the crisis unfolded sent his popularity rates to an unprecedented nadir
If the Heathrow Airport top dog was doomed to fail in the aftermath, Woldbye’s admission of going to bed as the crisis unfolded sent his popularity rates to an unprecedented nadir. Again, I’m torn. To an extent, it feels incredulous that he would even want to go to sleep, not knowing what he was going to wake up to. On the other hand, a well-managed organisation ensures that the entire senior management team can step up to the plate, share the workload, and hand over the baton to a recuperated colleague as the crisis plays out. Let’s also not lose sight of the fact that no one knows how long a crisis will last. I’m someone who is paranoid about the effects of a lack of sleep on being able to make clear and rational business decisions and cope under pressure. If he went to bed at midnight and was up working on a call at 07:30, Woldbye was more capable of performing for the remainder of the crisis because of his sleep. It wasn’t as if Woldbye was on the beach.
What we don’t yet know is how quickly Heathrow’s top brass reacted as the enormity of the situation unfolded. So often in the history of public transport – or any public-serving environment – has a problem so rapidly spawned a crisis with worsening impacts and negative headlines because, at the earliest opportunity, management haven’t seen the warning signs and mobilised themselves, both in terms of action but also briefing their superiors. I’ve seen so many major disruptions lead to alarming front page headlines when they have occurred in evenings or weekends, when senior leaders have not kept their eye on emerging operational situations, preferring (as is human nature) to hope the problem will go away so they get on with their own downtime.
It’s so important to be alive to situations and avoid them unravelling by having a heightened response at the earliest opportunity
Their will always be a better reaction during the middle of the day, when the leadership mind is focused and ‘in work mode’. It’s so important to be alive to situations and avoid them unravelling by having a heightened response at the earliest opportunity, and there’s no harm if they transpire to be false alarms. I’ve always viewed any problem as a manager in transport by asking myself, ‘What is the worst that might happen?’ and then picture having to regretfully answer for these, wishing the clock could be turned back.
Sometimes, though, the management of a crisis can be helped by the ‘right time, right place’. Network Rail CEO Andrew Haines gave the rail sector a more outspoken and vivid personal perspective of the major service disruption in December 2023 on the lines outside of Paddington because he was travelling at the time and in the thick of it. His disappointment at how the situation was handled was passionately articulated and had a greater impact in terms of addressing issues in the future. This level of chance is helped by leaders who, like Haines and many others in the sector, are habitually travelling on their own networks. They understand the strengths and weaknesses of their proposition and the feelings of customers.
Former transport secretary Ruth Kelly has been commissioned to review the Heathrow escapade, something that Woldbye says he’d welcome. This heaped more criticism on him, as some felt the response was almost goading-like along the lines of ‘fine with us, you’ll see it wasn’t our fault’, mixed with a bit of indifference.
Meanwhile, when questioned in the media, current transport secretary Heidi Alexander admitted she would have struggled to go to bed, but she was very diplomatically refusing to be drawn on whether the government still had confidence in the Heathrow Airport CEO. In my view, Heidi’s view that Heathrow is a privately-owned business and therefore not appropriate of her to comment on whether we say bye to Woldbye was absolutely spot on. In any case, this was a complex set of events – complicated to determine ultimate accountability and also challenging at this stage to decipher the quality of Heathrow Airport’s contingency planning and the extent to which it was enacted. We won’t sleep easy, though, until the report has been published.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Alex Warner has over 30 years’ experience in the transport sector, having held senior roles on a multi-modal basis across the sector. He is co-founder of transport technology business Lost Group and transport consultancy AJW Experience Group (which includes Great Scenic Journeys). He is also chair of West Midlands Grand Rail Collaboration.
This story appears inside the latest issue of Passenger Transport.
Should Heathrow say goodbye to Woldbye?
by Passenger Transport on Apr 3, 2025 • 3:59 pm No CommentsThe response to the recent power outage at Heathrow Airport has lessons for crisis management in the public transport sector
The power outage at Heathrow Airport a fortnight ago was fascinating in the way that it shone a lens on CEO Thomas Woldbye’s reaction to the crisis and his leadership approach. It was the kind of major disruption scenario that not infrequently occurs in the rail and, to an extent, bus and coach sectors.
I’m undecided on Woldbye’s management of the escapade. Quite often, situations like this force folk into taking a binary view of how the person at the top dealt with an incident – it was either very good or abominable, but in this case, it’s not clear cut at all. The trigger was a freak, off-site failure in a power station off Heathrow Airport premises, owned and managed by an external organisation. The British public relish finding a culprit to heap opprobrium on – a faceless power company in a run-of-the-mill west London suburb doesn’t have the appeal of a large, wealthy airport with a highly remunerated board or famous airlines whose customers were disrupted.
Faced with finger-wagging interviews on television, Woldbye’s response was eyebrow-raising. He had to navigate a way through gently reminding viewers that might be seeking a glamorous narrative that it was Heathrow Airport’s fault, that it wasn’t. He also had to show he appreciated the stress and financial loss felt by customers and avoid admitting that Heathrow’s contingency plans could have been better. It was a scenario that even the best media training would have struggled to prepare for.
Where Woldbye erred was too soon and instinctively in his response turning the spotlight on his pride at how his staff had managed the situation. Radio phone-ins I listened to in the aftermath were full of callers incandescent about his use of the word ‘proud’, and with selective hearing, they didn’t want to listen to all the other stuff he said about the crisis. How could the word ‘pride’ be used with a calamity that caused misery for over 300,000 and a big dent in the London economy? It was a red rag to a bull. It wasn’t helped by suggestions that he went to bed on the night of the crisis, nor his ‘no comment’ response when asked if he should resign.
I see parallels with the rail industry and where the response to a crisis of managers and staff of all levels is to bandy around headlines of pride at how everyone performed. This trench-like, ‘we were all in it together’ talk always alienates inconvenienced and out-of-pocket customers and creates a two-fingered ‘them and us’ feeling. It’s as though the priority is all about ‘the railway family’ of which customers are on the outside. I’ve been involved as a manager in many disruptions in transport and have seen firsthand, both this ‘going the extra mile’ (to utter another glib soundbite) and resilience from folk, but also a lot of chaotic, energy, huffing and puffing, bereft of polish and with results that aren’t as effective in terms of customer outcomes as we might think they are. All this rushing around, sweat and emotion tends to mask a lack of proper contingency planning back at the ranch and in the cut and thrust of the action, and indeed the aftermath, the industry loses sight objectively as to whether the service they provided was genuinely acceptable for customers. When normal service resumes, it’s sometimes challenging to ask industry folk to do the tedious and occasionally embarrassing stuff of committing to a proper, ‘cold light of day’ review of customer outcomes.
It comes down, as it often does, to self-awareness and the kind of stupidity that leads to managers of some of the worst performing train operating companies in the UK to regularly post on social media their pride for their ‘amazing team’ and great organisation, when these kind of comments are just a red rag to a bull for long-suffering customers. What, by the way, constitutes an ‘amazing team’? An article for another day.
On the one hand, Woldbye, was, I’d contest, on firmer ground than your average senior leader at a relegation-zone transport company, despite popular opinion having reservations about the ongoing campaign for a third runway. Performance at Heathrow Airport tends to be good and relatively free of negative headlines, and the majority of customers have an experience that is superior to that of many other airports, particularly given the large customer volumes. Queues through security are generally slickly managed, staff across the airport are smartly attired and customer-focused, information updates are timely and high quality, and facilities are stylish and elegant. Furthermore, public transport access to the airport, is excellent.
However, an alternative view of Heathrow belies the sparkle and glam, and it’s not unreasonable to see why Woldbye’s comments aggravated many. Due to high access charges levied on airlines, airfares from Heathrow are exorbitant compared to other UK airports. Many customers tend to feel that Heathrow’s priority is to suck as much money from customers as possible in retail outlets that have a higher mark-up than High Street equivalents, whilst trading on the negligence towards cost control that inflicts customers when they have just embarked on ‘holiday mode’ (of which my wife is a prime culprit). Almost all of the brands at the airport are high-end, and there’s no real sense that there will be a Poundland in my lifetime at Heathrow – or any airport for that matter. Although many major UK rail stations are now lavish, modern and stylish facilities, there’s still something for everyone regarding price and taste – let’s hope that continues.
Woldbye was demonised – not helped by those who felt he fitted the typical CEO mould at a time when ordinary folk were suffering – a very well-paid, older, middle-aged bloke, talking in corporate platitudes, representing a foreign company owning a famous UK institution. Part of the problem is that senior business leaders can seem dislikeable to your average body in the street, even if they are pleasant people, as I’m sure Woldbye is. The general public takes an instant dislike to these apparent stuffy-talking, lavishly remunerated fat cats, spewing out anodyne, wooden soundbites.
Senior managers can be really unrelatable. As I’m in the twilight of my career, I regularly remind myself of the times as a young person in the transport industry, the disdain I had when doing junior roles, sitting at my desk and watching these suited and booted jumped-up leaders swagger into the office, chuntering among themselves with serious looking faces and turning their noses down at those they ignored in the corridor. Maybe it was with a hint of envy, but I often think about how I felt back then and how myself and colleagues used to slag these people off as soon as they sauntered out of the building and then realise that probably that’s probably what the younger generation are doing now still and why top brass are no doubt as unpopular as ever, or more so. Many make it worse by trying to emulate the legendary business leader from just up the road from Heathrow in Slough, David Brent, with a ‘down with the kids’ approach, which backfires. Woldbye will have unfairly suffered because of all the ills of CEOs and the like over the years.
If the Heathrow Airport top dog was doomed to fail in the aftermath, Woldbye’s admission of going to bed as the crisis unfolded sent his popularity rates to an unprecedented nadir. Again, I’m torn. To an extent, it feels incredulous that he would even want to go to sleep, not knowing what he was going to wake up to. On the other hand, a well-managed organisation ensures that the entire senior management team can step up to the plate, share the workload, and hand over the baton to a recuperated colleague as the crisis plays out. Let’s also not lose sight of the fact that no one knows how long a crisis will last. I’m someone who is paranoid about the effects of a lack of sleep on being able to make clear and rational business decisions and cope under pressure. If he went to bed at midnight and was up working on a call at 07:30, Woldbye was more capable of performing for the remainder of the crisis because of his sleep. It wasn’t as if Woldbye was on the beach.
What we don’t yet know is how quickly Heathrow’s top brass reacted as the enormity of the situation unfolded. So often in the history of public transport – or any public-serving environment – has a problem so rapidly spawned a crisis with worsening impacts and negative headlines because, at the earliest opportunity, management haven’t seen the warning signs and mobilised themselves, both in terms of action but also briefing their superiors. I’ve seen so many major disruptions lead to alarming front page headlines when they have occurred in evenings or weekends, when senior leaders have not kept their eye on emerging operational situations, preferring (as is human nature) to hope the problem will go away so they get on with their own downtime.
Their will always be a better reaction during the middle of the day, when the leadership mind is focused and ‘in work mode’. It’s so important to be alive to situations and avoid them unravelling by having a heightened response at the earliest opportunity, and there’s no harm if they transpire to be false alarms. I’ve always viewed any problem as a manager in transport by asking myself, ‘What is the worst that might happen?’ and then picture having to regretfully answer for these, wishing the clock could be turned back.
Sometimes, though, the management of a crisis can be helped by the ‘right time, right place’. Network Rail CEO Andrew Haines gave the rail sector a more outspoken and vivid personal perspective of the major service disruption in December 2023 on the lines outside of Paddington because he was travelling at the time and in the thick of it. His disappointment at how the situation was handled was passionately articulated and had a greater impact in terms of addressing issues in the future. This level of chance is helped by leaders who, like Haines and many others in the sector, are habitually travelling on their own networks. They understand the strengths and weaknesses of their proposition and the feelings of customers.
Former transport secretary Ruth Kelly has been commissioned to review the Heathrow escapade, something that Woldbye says he’d welcome. This heaped more criticism on him, as some felt the response was almost goading-like along the lines of ‘fine with us, you’ll see it wasn’t our fault’, mixed with a bit of indifference.
Meanwhile, when questioned in the media, current transport secretary Heidi Alexander admitted she would have struggled to go to bed, but she was very diplomatically refusing to be drawn on whether the government still had confidence in the Heathrow Airport CEO. In my view, Heidi’s view that Heathrow is a privately-owned business and therefore not appropriate of her to comment on whether we say bye to Woldbye was absolutely spot on. In any case, this was a complex set of events – complicated to determine ultimate accountability and also challenging at this stage to decipher the quality of Heathrow Airport’s contingency planning and the extent to which it was enacted. We won’t sleep easy, though, until the report has been published.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Alex Warner has over 30 years’ experience in the transport sector, having held senior roles on a multi-modal basis across the sector. He is co-founder of transport technology business Lost Group and transport consultancy AJW Experience Group (which includes Great Scenic Journeys). He is also chair of West Midlands Grand Rail Collaboration.
This story appears inside the latest issue of Passenger Transport.
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