Letter: Airport failures

You report that BAA's Aberdeen airport suffered a "full power failure" for two hours due to "an underground cable" (31 August).

Since the 1970s mission critical systems have been designed to eliminate "single points of failure", designing in multiple power suppliers, uninterruptable power supplies and generators as well as fault-tolerant or computer systems.

It is staggering to find out that a power outage on one mains cable brought an airport to a stop as there was "no power to process passengers through security". It would appear that BAA's (Aberdeen) business continuity plans are woefully inadequate to deal with such a simple failure - let alone a major accident or incident.

It would be interesting to know if such under-investment in business continuity also applies to Edinburgh and Glasgow airports.

Michael N Crosby

Muiravonside

By Linlithgow