Counter terrorism police have found “no evidence” to suggest that a fire which knocked out an electricity substation near Heathrow Airport was suspicious.
Almost 300,000 passengers across more than 1,300 flights had their trips cancelled at Europe’s busiest airport on Friday after the blaze in Hayes led to a major power outage.
Some 120 aircraft heading to the airport at that time were forced to either divert or return to their point of origin, measures which saw passengers on board Qantas flights to Heathrow from Singapore and Perth diverted to Paris before taking buses to London.
In a fresh statement on Tuesday, the Met Police said its Counter Terrorism Command had been working to establish the cause of the fire in Hayes on Thursday night.
The force explained it is no longer treating the fire as a “potentially criminal matter” but it continues to remain in close contact with the National Grid, London Fire Brigade and Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN).
Since the fire, Heathrow’s chief executive Thomas Woldbye has faced questions over whether it was the right decision to shut the airport, with both Number 10 and Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander declining to say if they had confidence in the CEO.
Meanwhile the chief executive of National Grid John Pettigrew has insisted Heathrow Airport had “enough power” from remaining substations despite Friday’s shutdown.
Mr Woldbye delegated the formal decision to close the airport to his deputy in the early hours of Friday having gone to bed, the Sunday Times reported.
But a Heathrow spokesperson told the Standard 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”.
Following the fire, Ms Alexander said she wanted to see the results of an internal investigation by Heathrow into the handling of the fire crisis and the airport’s resilience planning, with the Government also commissioning a review by the National Energy Systems Operator.
She added that the decision to suspend flights at Heathrow on Friday was taken by the airport because it needed to reboot systems after switching to a different power supply.
The London Fire Brigade previously announced its investigation will focus on the electrical distribution equipment.
