It's not the first time a major airport is down because of power failure, and other airports are working to address this type of vulnerability.
> The power vulnerability for airports was never made more obvious and painful than in Atlanta seven years ago. An underground electrical system fire in late 2017 damaged two substations and caused a complete outage lasting nearly 12 hours at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport
Heathrow's power outage is much worse than Atlanta's, this is really bad. Allow me to make my point:
1. UK’s has one major airport to get out of the country—Heathrow. Gatwick and that lot don’t carry the same weight. When Heathrow goes down, you’re proper stuck. Atlanta has DC, Miami right there.
2. UK allows transit visas, so half the people transiting can’t even step out the terminal, what do they do when the airport is closed?
The US doesn’t allow that, everyone clears customs/passport control, so no ‘no man’s land’ limbo for stranded passengers.
3. Heathrow's outage is going to take 24 hours as of right now. That's twice Atlanta
Both Gatwick [0] and Stansted are busier than either Washington airport [1], and if you're considering Miami as an alternative to Atlanta then why not similarly ridiculous options like Paris, Amsterdam, Dublin for passengers stuck in Heathrow?
Miami and DC aren't even close to the nearest major airport cities to Atlanta. Charlotte and Orlando are many hours closer and busier [1] in terms of commercial passengers (though still not as convenient as the UK's comparable airports).
Only about a quarter of Heathrow passengers are transiting [2] and a significant portion of those are citizens of the US, EU, UK and other countries who don't need a visa. Maybe 10% of passengers are stuck in limbo, not half of them.
Hi dang, did you extend their comments' "editability" or is it already a feature I have been missing all along? I mean ability to edit/delete after a certain time (I guess it's a few hours right now?).
Ye, I've been travelling on it since the first week it opened. But if you were redirected and had to fend for yourself you would need to book ahead on a tunnel or boat, hire a car to drive from France to Coquelles - find somewhere to drop the car, hire another car in the UK. All assuming you land in Paris in the morning early enough to do all this.
Yes, all of which could be done in hours less time than it would take to get from Atlanta to any comparable airport.
Consider the amount of train/ferry transit between London and Paris. That doesn't exist in the US. Rental car companies don't keep that much extra stock on hand, and really do not love renting cars for inter-state one-way journeys.
I categorically reject that getting from Atlanta to London with ATL nonoperational would be either faster or easier than getting from London to Atlanta with LHR nonoperational.
That I use regularly to actually drive from no-too-far from LHR to Paris and back. It's a thing I actually do.
And I can tell you, it might be theoretically in Google Maps land to do the journey in 6 hours, but IRL in this scenario it won't happen. Actual empirical evidence.
In theory yes, but we were specifically talking about driving. And whilst 6 hours CDG to LHR is possible in theory (and I've done it a number of times), it does depend on a whole load of other factors that are not present compared to hiring a car at US airport 1 and driving to US airport 2.
Unless you're in the movie Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
I brought up driving to illustrate the incorrectness of the original claim, the person I replied to did not mention driving. The person you replied to is correct to bring up the EuroStar option.
By the way, the snide remarks you add to the end to each of your comments may be better suited for a place like Reddit or TruthSocial. The community standards guidelines for HN can be found at the bottom of the page.
I was replying to "It is a six hour drive from Heathrow to Paris."
I live close enough to LHR to notice the replacement of Boeing/Airbus with Cessna/Pipers from local airfields in the sky today. I also regularly drive to and/from Paris.
It is a six hour drive. But ONLY if you have your car ready, have booked a crossing ahead of time (otherwise you might want to slap another half day on those times), make no stops, you don't end up in a queue at UK customs (1 hour+ not infrequent occurrance). Don't happen to have your car sitting at CDG waiting for you? You'll have to hire one, but you'll be unlikely to be able to take that to the UK so you're then finding somewhere to drop that off and somehow cross as a foot passenger which you can't do on Le Shuttle...
Point being, cross-border travel throws up all of these hurdles which you simply don't have in the US example.
It's still "right there" overall, you can take a local flight that takes one hour.
Most importantly, you're in the same country whereas in the case of LHR closing the number of airports able to handle widebody long haulers...are essentially all in countries with different customs and visas.
The US has dozens of smaller commercial and even private airports, same for London honestly so this isn't the greatest arguement except it doesn't need to deal with customs.
At least Ireland and the UK are in one visa regime, outside of Schengen. And because there are plenty of flights between Ireland and Schengen countries, all commercial Irish airports should have passport control.
But Dublin airport has about 1/2 the gates of Heathrow...
1: It's clearly not been as disruptive as you're suggesting. Flights have been diverted to airports within a few hour's journey by bus or train, others have been cancelled, just like would happen with Atlanta.
2: I don't know if they've done it, but the UK can grant entry for a few days to affected passengers. This will be part of a contingency plan.
> 2. UK allows transit visas, so half the people transiting can’t even step out the terminal, what do they do when the airport is closed?
Airside to airside bus shuttle?
> The US doesn’t allow that, everyone clears customs/passport control, so no ‘no man’s land’ limbo for stranded passengers.
Anchorage International Airport, amongst few (less than a handful really) other US airports, have separate international section with sterilised transit.
> It's not the first time a major airport is down because of power failure, and other airports are working to address this type of vulnerability.
To be fair, I'd probably be more interested to hear what major airports are doing to avoid a reoccurance of CrowdStrike-type scenarios. Which is perhaps a more likely re-occurence than loss of substation feeds.
> The power vulnerability for airports was never made more obvious and painful than in Atlanta seven years ago. An underground electrical system fire in late 2017 damaged two substations and caused a complete outage lasting nearly 12 hours at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport
https://www.microgridknowledge.com/microgrids/article/551275...