Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage

cnn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 260 posts

Re: London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage

#81

Post by nickdothutton »

jakozaur wrote: post #65

This is way worse due to London airports' lack of spare capacity. They should have built Thames Estuary Airport a long time ago.

What I don't get is that the government now says it wants a 3rd runway (this has been debated for 30 years). Why add a 3rd runway, costing billions and taking decades, to an airport that can't use it 24-7 due to noise restrictions, and doesn't even have resilient power from the grid. Heathrow should have been bulldozed years ago and replaced with housing, and the estuary airport built. Or the Maplin Sands project 50 years before that.

Re: London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage

#83

Post by blibble »

belter wrote: post #62
blindriver wrote: post #10

Seems like a national security issue if there’s a single point of failure a few miles away that can take down one of Europe’s largest airports and global air travel.

It's not looking good and the other alternative airports in the UK are at full capacity: "Heathrow Doesn't Know When Power Will Be Back, Days of Disruption Expected" - https://www.newsweek.com/heathrow-airport-fire-counterterror... If the entire transformer is lost, procuring replacement transformers for substations can take from several months to years. Insulation failures are relatively common in older power substa…

the utility are expecting to go back on at 3pm...

(edit: and are back)

Re: London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage

#84

Post by pjc50 »

oncallthrow wrote: post #79
jakozaur wrote: post #65

This is way worse due to London airports' lack of spare capacity. They should have built Thames Estuary Airport a long time ago.

Yes, unfortunately NIMBYs have been blocking any iota of progress in this area for around 40 years

That and the sunken ship full of explosives, yes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Richard_Montgomery#/media/F...

Re: London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage

#85

Post by pjmorris »

traceroute66 wrote: post #37
smashah wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heathrow is a significant part of the UK economy, what is with the dismissive attitude? I don't imagine an american being so dismissive about JFK being taken offline.

> Heathrow is a significant part of the UK economy Is it, really ? From Heathrow's own website[1], so we can expect figures on the "generous" side: "Heathrow Airport is expected to contribute approximately £4.7bn to the UK economy " This incident started somewhere around midnight and is currently estimated to be resolved by 15:00. So let's round that up to "one day". £4.7bn divided by 365 is £12.8m Compared to say, t…

I've flown through Heathrow a dozen or so times, and have spent maybe $200 in various shops and restaurants. Outside the airport, I spent months working on projects, and both I and the projects involved much more than $200. An analysis that includes only direct spending misses the overall impact.

Re: London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage

#86

Post by ohgr »

jakozaur wrote: post #65

This is way worse due to London airports' lack of spare capacity. They should have built Thames Estuary Airport a long time ago.

So much this. They're still wanking over building a third runway at Heathrow which is about the worst possible solution.

Re: London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage

#88

Post by cmsj »

pjc50 wrote: post #84
oncallthrow wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, unfortunately NIMBYs have been blocking any iota of progress in this area for around 40 years

That and the sunken ship full of explosives, yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Richard_Montgomery#/media/F...

I can think of a very quick way to make those explosives safe!

Re: London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage

#89

Post by pjc50 »

traceroute66 wrote: post #29
blindriver wrote: post #10

Seems like a national security issue if there’s a single point of failure a few miles away that can take down one of Europe’s largest airports and global air travel.

> Seems like a national security issue if there’s a single point of failure No. Its not. Its the fact that the decades of under-investment in power distribution infrastructure is coming home to roost. Its no secret there's little to no "fat" in the UK grid system. Hence it has difficulty coping with black-swan events such as this. Anyone who buys datacentre space in London knows the reason prices have gone through th…

So .. why are people trying to build new datacentre space in London rather than somewhere a bit further away and less expensive? Easier to put the datacentre near the power and run some fiber rather than the other way round, surely?

The expense is unpleasant, but the money has to come from somewhere, and the user paying is easier to justify than all the other bill-payers collectively or the taxpayer.

Re: London's Heathrow Airport announces complete shutdown due to power outage

#90

Post by zknill »

gambiting wrote: post #14

Well....I have a flight to LHR tomorrow morning, I'm guessing I should start looking at alternatives now :P

IANAL but, you should be in contact with your airline about your specific flight.

You are entitled to be re-booked on the next available flight or get a refund. If you take a refund the airline has no obligation to you anymore. You might find after taking a refund, the price of an equivalent flight is now much more.

Post reply on HN