His phone had adversely gone into silent mode. I think anyone with an iPhone will recognise

how this can happen sometimes. But the important point to note is that the right positions were

taken by the right people.

Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder. It's Thursday

the 29th of May. That was the voice of

Ruth Kelly, former transport secretary, now non-executive director of London Heathrow Airport,

and the woman who has conducted the Kelly Review into what happened on Friday the 21st of March

2025. If you were one of the 200,000 plus passengers that day whose flights were cancelled or

diverted, or maybe in the next few days where there was still disruption, you will, like me, be very

interested to find out what went wrong. And so I was glad to be able to talk to Ruth Kelly

about her report and its main conclusion. They took really good decisions, the right decision, quickly, to close the airport in these

exceptionally difficult circumstances and clearly prioritised the safety of passengers' employees.

They were able to use the contingency plans they had.

They used multiple contingency plans and managed to minimise the

disruption on the day to passengers and other users of the airport.

There's some really interesting details that come out. In particular, there's an alarm system

called F24, which calls all the top people, everybody in the command and control structure,

but it didn't wake up Mr. Walby, Thomas Walby, the chief executive.

Thomas Walby was extremely frustrated with himself that he wasn't available on the light.

Clearly calls were made and attempts were made to contact him. His phone had

adversely gone into silent mode. I think anyone with an iPhone will recognize how this can

happen sometimes. And we've made significant recommendations about having backup systems and so forth

...