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Comment by sss111 | Hacker News Reader

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

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This 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_...

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_busiest_airports...

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/303939/flight-transfers-...

I'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.

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?).

It's an aspirational 'edit out'. As in, 'don't include them in the future'.

> 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.

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.

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...

> 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?

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.

Florida is very long.

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.

3: The airport reopened for some flights already.

> 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”.

I like how US’s lack of automatic transit visas is being described as a good thing here. It is an absolutely nightmare in practice.

Hahahaha what. The UK has multitude of airports that get you out of the country, even long-haul. Manchester, for example.

> 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.

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