Hacker News Reader

Comment by prvit | Hacker News Reader

People making more than $300k/yr TC aren’t exactly a small minority on HN. While the VIP service at Heathrow is unusually expensive compared to other airports, it’s really not a crazy price to avoid some very stressful hours.

View on HN

Even if you're on 300k a year, that's still 1/4th of your monthly salary to stay in a fancy lounge for two hours and avoid a shuttle bus

Yeah...I can see spending 275 pounds if I were REALLY desperate.

2750 pound? Maybe if you made $3 million a year.

In my experience, flying from/to Heathrow is no more stressful than the average day at work. If I made something crazy like $10M/year, I might consider paying those fees. As long as my compensation is at the level of mere mortals, my time is not worth even remotely that much.

My experience with Heathrow which is considerable (although not recently) is that other than a lot of walking--which is fine if you're able-bodied and your carry-on is reasonable is OK--it's mostly OK. Especially as a US citizen who was latterly able to use the electronic entry lanes.

As a crude point of comparison, you'd be buying this service at about 917 euros/hour. With a pretty lax 1600 hours/year you'd have to make almost 1.5M per year to match the rate.

I flew out of LHR a couple of weeks ago. The security lines were longer than I have ever seen (took ~45m to an hour total, but I forgot some sunblock in my bag and had to wait quite a while for them to search it) but it was hardly stressful. I suppose if you're tight on time and cut things fine this could become a worry but that's avoidable by getting there a bit earlier. The airport staff were pretty good about checking for people on flights that were going to close soon, too. For me spending £2750 + VAT to avoid this is absolutely crazy (it's 5 years' worth of laptops) but perhaps I don't value my time as much as others here.

I flew out last week, took 20 minutes. They are clearly understaffed, but it was smooth. My entire holiday cost £600 so not planning on taking up that offer anytime soon :P

>People making more than $300k/yr TC aren't exactly a small minority on HN. ... it's really not a crazy price...

Heathrow doesn't serve only HN users, nor only the wealthy, though. I'd wager that £2750 plus VAT is hardly "relatively little money" for the average person traveling through Heathrow.

This isn’t the “average person traveling through Heathrow” forum. This is a forum run by a big VC fund for startup billionaires and temporarily embarrassed startup billionaires.

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic with these posts, or if you're just actually out of touch.

That's still a month's rent for a lot of people, why would you spend that on a lounge for a few hours?

I think most people would balk at the price. If it was 30 quid it would be reasonable.

30 quid was what I was imagining when I read "relatively little money"

I make more than that and still think this isn't worth it. I understand flying business on a long haul but you're not exactly saving on traffic, etc. using this service.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com