Janet Airlines | Hacker News Reader

Janet Airlines

en.wikipedia.org

180 pointsIgorPartola56 comments

Makes you think about the enormous cost of the United State's defense operations if they have come to the conclusion that it is sensible to routinely fly employees for a commute. Extravagant things like this are obviously only a miniscule fraction of the cost, but still.

It does speak to the enormous costs, but, given the kinds of operations that they're serving with this thing, it makes some sense to me. The whole point of, e.g., the facility at Groom Lake is that it's very remote. Accumulating a large town nearby would defeat the purpose.

> It does speak to the enormous costs, but, given the kinds of operations that they're serving with this thing, it makes some sense to me.

Just a consideration: would it be cheaper to build and use an express railroad line between the remote facility and "the other commute destination" instead?

Maybe over the long term, but I wouldn't say that for certain given the insane costs of building infrastructure in that kind of environment. However, I can say that it would totally defeat the purpose of trying to keep things secret. Any tracks would be visible in satellite images and show exactly where the trains go.

planes are not hard to track

They were presumably a fair bit harder to track in 1972.

It’s a hundred pretty mountainous miles from Las Vegas to Area 51. The cost of building a fast line along that route would probably pay for decades of these flights.

It would have been a lot cheaper if the military didn't order the Tonopah & Tidewater Railway to be dismantled for its precious steel. That would be like half the line.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonopah_and_Tidewater_Railro...

It had already ceased operation before the start of the war (in the US), and would have been taken up for scrap sooner or later anyway. Even without World War II, there is exactly zero chance that the railroad would have survived long enough to be useful again. Unused rail lines don't sit for 50 years without being scrapped. (At least, they didn't in those days. Tennessee Pass seems to be headed toward becoming the exception that proves the rule.)

No.

and the carbon footprint. I'm supposed to conserve gas or take the train to reduce my footprint, meanwhile there's 20 or 30 flights/day, probably not all full, going from vegas to groom lake, guzzling gallons of jet fuel per second.

Military does far worse all the time, thousands of planes and vehicles that do not have to comply with any civilian emissions standards and are on the move every day for no reason at all. Ferrying employees on a civilian jet will be one of the most efficient things that the airforce is doing every day.

Ever meet any consultants? I got 2 in my family and 1 of them takes 2 flights per week and the other takes 3-6 flights per week. Add in the hotel costs and their businesses expenses are almost certainly more than these workers taking short 90 mile flights.

Yes I know many, and the consultants that travel this much are enormously expensive. For a top tier management consulting company, I heard they typically bill at like a million dollars per year per consultant, all together. They also typically don't go to the same place for more than 6-12 months or so, which is why they travel this much.

> Extravagant things like this are obviously only a miniscule fraction of the cost

What makes it 'extravagant'? That it's not typical or normal?

Fyi... Wendover Productions made a 4-minute about it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWNGAUvSyOc

> During the turn the pilot suffered a sudden cardiac death. Half way through the turn the airplane began a gradual descent until it impacted the ground. The airplane broke up and burst into flames. Investigation revealed that the pilot had violated federal policy and directives, wilfully deceived flight medical examiners, suppressed significant medical information and ingested inappropriate medications for a deteriorating and dangerous health condition. The pilot had high blood pressure and failed to report it, and denied taking medications to his Federal Aviation Administration flight physical examiners.

https://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=20040316-...

Reminds me of the guy who calculated that it's cheaper to commute from Barcelona to his London office than to rent a London apartment https://bestburgerinnorthwestlondon.wordpress.com/2013/10/24...

Anyone else surprised to read that the fleet is all ex-Air China aircraft? That seems like a security hole.

Why? Does anyone think that those aircrafts would not have been stripped down and inspected in every possible way before going into service? Not to mention that they were purchased by a shell corporation to avoid any connection to the US government at the time of purchase.

Well sure. But Chinese intelligence is pretty ... intelligent. I wouldn't be surprised if they were at least somewhat aware of the origin of the shell corp. And the idea that one can strip a 737 down to a point that one can be certain that it contains no bugs or modifications seems unlikely to me. Doing so would certainly offset whatever discount you got by buying the 737 from a foreign source.

Makes me think of Jiang Zemin's 767.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2002/01/19/c...

There's certainly precedent of US intelligence missing a potential device https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)

Satellites probably make it pretty easy to spot the runways and track the flights anyway

I bet Charles Stross could come up with a clever occult explanation of this for a Laundry Files novel.

I'm sure the Black Chamber has uses for a secret airline.

Just finished The Labyrinth Index on PTO this week. The Nazgul only get nastier and nastier.

So what happens if you’re running late one day? You don’t get to go into work? Or do you hold up the plane?

Probably depends on how important you are?

Maybe that's what the turboprop are for.

at peak times they run a jet every 20 minutes. Evenings you could get delayed for a couple hours, but even then they have flights going as late as 8-9pm. you can watch the flights on https://flightaware.com/live/airport/KLAS, look for flights starting with WWW

It'd be PITA when you have to go to the air port to get in the air plane to go to the work, then get back, __every__ day.

LA to Area 51 is 25m flight and their boarding procedures are probably quite a bit more efficient compared to normal passenger flights. doesn't look too bad compared to other people's commute in LA, i imagine.

Depends if they include the commute as part of the working hours. Then it is less bad.

And at least on a plane, you are guaranteed a seat! :)

Why? It's basically show up, park, walk on plane. No different than taking a commuter bus from SF to Mountain View. You'd obviously not be going through anything more than the usual security at a classified work site.

Reminds me of this post:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6617319

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/aug/11/commuting-fro...

The article states there is a dedicated terminal for these flights. The passengers would have to all be pre-cleared - otherwise they wouldn't be commuting to Area 51 at all. It's a short flight, so as long as the driving portion of their commute (on both ends, Area 51 isn't small) is reasonable, the total commute time could be within an acceptable range.

I think the time spent traveling is billable.

It’s still probably less painful than the corporate shuttle from SoMa to Mountain View.

I still wonder at the Manhattan district and how they used trains to ship radioactive elements and people...

radioactive material in trains? Have they not learnt anything from Broken Arrow?

It was before that. The test plutonium microgramme samples being purified by Glenn Seaborg went by train under armed guard but according to Richard Rhodes would 'wander' in the foil packaging. They talk of plutonium migrating upstream against an article even.

Definite or indefinite?

with plutonium, at the time? I think indefinite.

I was being a bit snarky. I have no idea what this sentence even means:

> They talk of plutonium migrating upstream against an article even.

Migrate? Upstream? What article?

ah. now I see. autocorrect. against an airflow.

Radioactive material is regularly transported by train in Europe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_flask

How else do you ship it? Radioactive materials count as pretty much anything irradiated, so for a Navy nuclear plant (something they transport on trains that is radioactive) that's every pipe, valve, and metal fitting from the primary loop. You're not shipping all that by truck or plane with more security than a train, which is pretty unstoppable and it's easy to anti-air missiles and stuff to a train vs. a truck. Also, you'd need dozens of trucks or planes for one reactor decommissioning vs. one fairly compact train.

it was a point in time. I have no problem with casks on secured trains. I've even watched the crash-test videos for amusement like everyone else.

I'm talking about ancient history where they put two guys on a train with a box.

This 'its the company don't ask questions' airline is much more what I would have expected, back in the day. I would have expected they detailed off a truck and some troops to do the drive. But no: they gave a suitcase to somebody and sent it on the red-eye.

Well that's terrifying, I am glad they have stopped that sort of thing!

Why is Santa Barbara Municipal one of their destinations rather than Vandenberg?

VAFB is fairly impractical for civilian contractors and if for daily commutes. Many more contractor offices and people live near SBA.

Same reason Camarillo is on there even though it's right next to the naval/air base.

Raytheon has/had a huge presence in the Santa Barbara area.

Yeah, Raytheon Vision. They do satellite cameras/sensors. Northrup Grumman is there too.

I saw one of those airliners during my last trip to LV. Sometimes when you drive on Flamingo you can get a glimpse of them.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com