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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—He
by sss111 2y ago
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
- margalabargala 2y ago> When Heathrow goes down, you’re proper stuck. Atlanta has DC, Miami right there "right there" It is a ten hour drive from Atlanta to DC. It is a nine hour drive from Atlanta to Miami. It is a six hour drive from Heathrow to Paris.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- 4ndrewl 2y ago[flagged]
- margalabargala 2y agoNo, but it does include the time to get yourself and your vehicle on to and off of the train that carries vehicles through the Channel Tunnel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LeShuttle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LeShuttle
- 4ndrewl 2y agoYe, 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.
- Symbiote 2y agoThen your comment about rowing across the sea is idiotic. The airlines that redirected flights to Paris arranged buses to London.
- 4ndrewl 2y agoHaving thought about it you're correct. Even if you over inflate your tyres it won't provide enough buoyancy even for the smallest Euro-car. An alternative reading to it 'being idiotic' is that it was clearly an exaggeration to prompt some critical thinking about the original claim.
- oefnak 2y agoThere's a train between the UK and France. It carries cars.
- 4ndrewl 2y agoThat 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.
- wqaatwt 2y agoWhat critical thinking? The train from London to Paris is barely above 2 hours. Why on earth would you drive if you’re in hurry?
- t0mas88 2y agoThe Eurostar train from London to Paris takes only 2.5 hours. Much faster than driving.
- maest 2y agoIt's also less agro
- 4ndrewl 2y agoIn 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.
- margalabargala 2y agoI 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.
- 4ndrewl 2y agoI 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.
- epolanski 2y agoIt'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.
- netsharc 2y agoAt 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...
- chrisandchris 2y ago> It's still "right there" overall, you can take a local flight that takes one hour. From which airport? The one that is closed because there's no power?
- oyashirochama 2y agoThe 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.
- MathMonkeyMan 2y agoFlorida is very long.
- Symbiote 2y ago1: 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. 3: The airport reopened for some flights already.
- dmurray 2y agoThis is laughably poor geography. 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. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_airports_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_airports_in_... [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_busiest_airports_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_busiest_airports... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/303939/flight-transfers-and-passengers-terminating-at-selected-uk-airports-uk/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/303939/flight-transfers-...
- dang 2y agoI'm late to this thread, but can you please edit out swipes from your HN comments? Your comment would be excellent without that first bit. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
- crossroadsguy 2y agoHi 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?).
- pvg 2y agoIt's an aspirational 'edit out'. As in, 'don't include them in the future'.
- thebruce87m 2y ago> UK’s has one major airport to get out of the country—Heathrow. I’ve been using Edinburgh airport and Glasgow airport for 40 years to “get out of the country”.
- anticensor 2y ago> 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.
- MisterSandman 2y agoI like how US’s lack of automatic transit visas is being described as a good thing here. It is an absolutely nightmare in practice.
- gizajob 2y agoHahahaha what. The UK has multitude of airports that get you out of the country, even long-haul. Manchester, for example.