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Comment by throwaway2037 | Hacker News Reader

throwaway2037

    > I've seen data centers that were built to withstand an aircraft impact (they were located on a major airport flight path).

Can you give an example? I find this hard to believe. Why not pick a location not within a "major airport flight path"? It seems much cheaper.

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London has lots of datacentres in Slough (near Heathrow) and Docklands (London City Airport, but also many LHR planes transit over).

AWS/Azure/GCP/etc Colo in Equinix/Telehouse datacentres there, and those Docklands locations in particular were picked based on location to LINX (major London peering/interchange), and LINX was put in Docklands out of desire for relatively proximity to telcos, and London’s banking/finance industry.

Were those obviously hardened to withstand the impact of an jet aeroplane? I doubt it.

No idea, just answering the “Why not pick a location not within a "major airport flight path"? It seems much cheaper.” question.

Semi-related, there are some very cool converted datacentres in the UK.

The Bunker operates an underground datacentre out of a former military installation. Radar base if memory serves me. That’s definitely hardened from airplane attacks and I believe is used by some hyperscalers.

https://thebunker.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/The-Bunker-...

At least one colo facility I’ve been was an ex-defense facility. And it had reasons to be where it was, and to be hardened.

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