The resilience gap: why airports need a common language for operational continuity
Authors
Resilient components do not automatically make a resilient airport. Recent disruption events show how a contained failure can ripple across a whole operation. The sector needs a clearer way to connect infrastructure decisions with the operations they are expected to protect.
Airports are among the most complex pieces of national infrastructure. Power, communications, buildings, airfield systems, passenger processing, baggage, security, surface transport and many independent organisations all come together in one operational environment.
We routinely describe parts of this environment as resilient. An electrical network may have alternative supplies, a critical system duplicated equipment, a communications platform automatic failover. But the more important question is not simply whether each component has redundancy. It is whether the airport can keep delivering its essential functions when disruption crosses the boundaries between them.
Recent events have made that distinction hard to ignore. According to the NATS Major Incident Preliminary Investigation Report, a software defect within part of the NATS flight data system led to UK-wide air traffic restrictions on 8 September 2026 while the National Airspace System was restarted and flight data reloaded. Operations returned to normal that evening, but passenger disruption continued for more than two days.
The North Hyde substation fire in March 2025 raised a related question. The North Hyde Review Final Report found that configuration of Heathrow Airport’s internal electrical network meant that the loss of one of its three supply points removed power from some operationally critical systems. Heathrow had a plan to reconfigure the network onto its other supplies, but it was estimated to take 10-12 hours.
Neither incident is evidence that the sector ignores resilience. Both show something more fundamental: a relatively contained failure can have consequences that ripple through a much wider operational system.
From system redundancy to operational outcomes
Airport projects already give resilience a lot of attention with requirements for electrical networks, standby power, mechanical services, fire protection, communications, IT, security and specialist airport systems.
The difficulty is that these requirements are often defined within disciplinary or contractual boundaries. Each system may perform exactly as specified, while the airport as a whole remains exposed at the interfaces.
Take baggage operations. Resilient power to the handling equipment matters, but on its own it does not keep the service running. That also depends on check-in, security screening, communications, controls, data interfaces, fire strategies, access and trained operational staff. The same applies across the airport. A stand may keep power while docking guidance is unavailable. An alternative supply may exist, but isolating faults, transferring loads and checking systems may take longer than operations can tolerate.
This is why component reliability, system redundancy and operational resilience are not interchangeable concepts.
Component reliability asks whether an asset will perform when required. System redundancy asks whether another asset or route is available if it does not. Operational resilience asks whether the airport can continue to deliver a defined service at an acceptable level throughout the disruption and recovery.
It is the third question that must shape the first two.
The market gap is one of translation
There is no shortage of relevant standards or industry initiatives. ISO 22301 provides an established framework through which organisations can prepare for, respond to and recover from disruption. ISO 22372 provides wider guidance on infrastructure resilience, including the collaboration between the organisations that keep essential services running. ICAO, ACI and others cover emergency planning, business continuity, climate adaptation, disaster preparedness and collaborative decision making. Frameworks from other sectors, such as data centres, have helped clients and design teams discuss concepts such as redundancy, maintainability and fault tolerance in comparatively clear terms.
But each was written for a different purpose. Business continuity standards work at an organisational level. Infrastructure resilience guidance applies across multiple sectors. Data centre classifications address facilities with different operating characteristics. Airport emergency and continuity plans set out how to respond to disruption, but do not necessarily define the infrastructure performance required to maintain airport wide outcomes.
What's missing is a consistent, airport specific way to turn operational priorities into coordinated infrastructure requirements across systems and organisations. The opportunity isn't to replace existing work, but to connect it to how airports actually operate.
Start with what the airport must keep doing
A more useful conversation begins with operational outcomes, not equipment. Before deciding whether an airport needs another transformer, generator or communications link, an airport should be able to answer four questions:
- Which operational functions must be protected?
- At what minimum capacity must each function continue?
- For how long can it be interrupted?
- On which people, systems, utilities and external organisations does it depend?
The answers can change the engineering response considerably. Some safety critical activities may permit no loss of service. Others may tolerate a brief interruption while systems transfer. Some could continue at reduced capacity. Less critical activities might shut down safely and recover within an agreed period.
Resilience should not always mean maintaining 100% of normal operations. Often the right outcome may be a safe minimum operating state, followed by controlled and prioritised recovery. Framing it this way directs investment at consequences rather than assumptions and shows where physical redundancy is genuinely necessary and where spatial, procedural or operational measures would work better.
An airport resilience outcomes framework
A practical framework approach can bring this together in five connected stages.
- Define critical operational outcomes. Identify the functions that must be protected. These might include emergency response, safe aircraft movement, passenger security, essential communications, controlled baggage processing and a defined level of terminal operation. The purpose is not to declare every airport activity critical. It is to distinguish the outcomes whose loss would produce unacceptable safety, security, operational or economic consequences.
- Set tolerable interruption and minimum capacity. Give each outcome a maximum interruption and a minimum operating level, from no interruption, through recovery in seconds or minutes, to restoration within hours or by the next operating period. The categories require broad industry agreement, not assumptions made within one discipline.
- Map dependencies. Trace each outcome through the power, cooling, fire safety, data, communications, controls, specialist systems, external utilities, personnel, supply chains and third parties. This is where common mode risks appear: two “independent” systems may share a power route, communications platform, technical room, operational team or external supplier.
- Define a minimum operating state. Agree in advance what acceptable reduced operation looks like, such as closing parts of a terminal, prioritising selected aircraft stands, limiting baggage capacity. This gives engineers a meaningful performance target and operators a basis for planning, training and decision making.
- Verify the outcome. Test that the airport can deliver the required outcome, not simply that an individual asset starts or changes over. A generator test proves the generator works, not that terminal, security, baggage and communications will work together after a real loss of supply. Scenario tests should cross system and organisational boundaries and cover transfer times, human intervention, restart sequencing, and the progressive recovery of operational capacity.
Learning from live airport environments
Our project experience shows why it pays to look beyond isolated assets.
At London Gatwick, Cundall carried out an estate wide study of the cooling infrastructure serving the North and South Terminals, looking at system diversity, load flexibility and longer-term service provision. We set out gold, silver and bronze options based on benefits and budget costs. Separately we peer reviewed the resilience of critical systems to identify single points of failure. The lesson is broader than cooling: estate level infrastructure decisions are stronger when operational dependencies, investment priorities and future change are considered together.
At Dublin Airport, Cundall supported the provision of Advanced Visual Docking Guidance Systems, including structural feasibility, intrusive surveys and coordination with existing and planned services. We had to accommodate discrepancies between existing physical structures and available digital information while the airport remained operational. That’s the reality at established airports: improvements are delivered around ageing assets, tight programmes and live systems that cannot simply be switched off.
Port Polska in Poland presents a contrasting opportunity. As a greenfield development, it can build capacity, spatial separation, system dependencies, recovery strategies, sustainability and future flexibility in from day one.
For new airports, the task is to protect flexibility before key infrastructure decisions become fixed. For existing airports, it is to understand the dependencies already in the estate and target investment where it makes the biggest difference.
Resilience in an electrified airport
This joined up approach matters more as airports electrify. Electrical and digital networks will support more terminal systems, ground transport, charging, airfield equipment, stand services and operational technology. That cuts direct fossil fuel consumption but concentrates more operational dependency in fewer networks.
The answer is not to resist electrification, but to recognise how it changes resilience. Additional connections, controls and conversion technologies can create new dependencies. Standby generation sized for today's loads may not protect a heavily electrified future. And the space, distribution capacity and recovery strategies established now may determine which technologies can be adopted later.
Resilience and decarbonisation should be planned together. A low carbon solution that cannot sustain essential operations is not future ready. Equally, a highly redundant solution that perpetuates unnecessary carbon intensity and inflexibility cannot represent the long-term answer.
A common language, and a task for the industry
A sector framework should not prescribe the same solution everywhere. Resilience requirements must reflect each airport’s scale, network role, passenger and cargo operations, safety and security obligations, and the wider consequences of disruption. The most technically robust solution is not automatically the most proportionate or effective one. What airports need is a consistent way to reach that decision.
That calls for airport owners, operators, designers, regulators, airlines, utility providers and system suppliers to develop a shared, outcome-led approach to resilience. This need not begin as another heavyweight standard. A practical framework, tested against real airport scenarios, could turn established continuity and resilience principles into coordinated, airport specific and verifiable requirements.
The benefits would reach every part of the airport. Boards would have a clearer basis for investment priorities. Operators could define what continuity means in practice. Designers could coordinate around airport wide outcomes rather than discipline specific assumptions. And everyone would share a basis for testing whether the airport can sustain an acceptable level of operation when interconnected systems are under stress.
New airport programmes could embed it from the outset, while existing airports could use it to identify hidden dependencies, inform capital planning and target improvements where they would have the greatest operational value.
Recent disruption has shown how quickly a local failure can become a network wide event. The industry should not wait for the next incident before closing the gap between resilient assets and resilient operations.
A resilient airport is not one where every system has a backup. It is one keeps performing when the assumptions behind those systems begin to fail.
To find out how we can help you understand your airport's critical dependencies and plan resilience around operational outcomes, get in touch.
