Hacker News Reader

I recently did ORD-HKG and spent quite a lot of time thinking about ETOPS diversion airports over Siberia (because honestly what else are you gonna do). Now I'm wondering if you can even land a fully laden 777 at any of them. Most of them don't even seem to have wikipedia pages.

View on HN

A few years ago I flew to the north of Sweden in January and as expected the ground was covered in snow. What surprised me was that the runway wasn't cleared - we actually landed on the snow. This was in a Boeing 737 so not exactly a small aircraft.

I suspect there's a lot of places in Siberia where you can land a 777 just fine. It's the amenities in the terminal building (if there is one) that won't be too appealing.

In Soviet times, a lot of civil infrastructrure was built with an eye to military use, so you get some suspiciously long runways at rinky-dink airports.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com