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Comment by HeavenFox | Hacker News Reader

I am actually sympathetic here - one quirk of New York City is despite hosting some of the busiest airports in the country, there simply aren't any reasonable airport hotels.

There used to be many, but the City bought most of them outright and converted them into homeless shelters. The remainder serve as overflow, so you probably don't want to stay there either. The common wisdom in the frequent flyer community seems to be to just head to Manhattan, or go to Flushing - it's more fun that way anyways.

* The exception is probably the newly opened TWA hotel on JFK, which is really nice, albeit pricy

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I leapt into your comment to profess my love for the TWA Hotel but saw you actually mentioned it towards the end. I fly a Melbourne => JFK leg a couple of times a year and the fact that I can grab the AirTrain for one stop and then be at the hotel is pretty great. Doesn't really hit me that I'm back in the states until I walk into that lobby.

It's worth considering the direction of causality here. I doubt the City has somehow priced out frequent flyers who'd otherwise love to stay near the airport in droves. The City could afford to buy those hotels only because demand had already evaporated.

> The City could afford to buy those hotels only because demand had already evaporated

Because of the pandemic or some other reason?

not about the hotels, but a correction on the jfk.

it's not one "of the busiest airport in the country". I can confirm that it's malebolge, the VIII circle of hell.

I had my share of trips in my life: european countries, uae, Japan...

But I never experienced anything remotely comparable.

All the times I went there the flights were 3-4 hours late.

One time I was in a plane that was taxing through the Airport for one hour just to wait for a free line to depart.

The lines at the immigrations entrance started from the plane itself!

And there was one time where, after waiting for the gate to open, already a couple hours late, the captain said that someone stole the airplane!!

You have had some very interesting experiences at JFK. I'm honestly always amazed at how fast I can move through security there.

I just flew out recently and it took... maybe a half hour to check my bag and get through TSA security with an opt out request (for the scanners, so they pat you down instead).

Maybe I'm lucky, but I've flown through JFK and LaGuardia a fair amount and never really had any staggering wait times.

I do wish they could have just made the Air Tram part of the subway system cause taking a taxi during rush hour was certainly a mistake but Q ->... hmm I guess the A or J or whatever train would get me to the Air Tram -> Air Tram is a bit of a pain.

Although, I will say, if you stand at the front of the air tram at night so you can look out the front window as you zoom down the track, that's pretty neat and beautiful.

> I do wish they could have just made the Air Tram part of the subway system cause taking a taxi during rush hour was certainly a mistake but Q ->... hmm I guess the A or J or whatever train would get me to the Air Tram -> Air Tram is a bit of a pain.

Unfortunately, federal law essentially prohibits cities from having subways connect directly to airports, which is why nearly every city in the country has a separate train shuttle to the airport (assuming they have a subway system in the first place at all).

For what it's worth, if you're taking the Q to the A, you're probably coming from a place where it's actually faster to take the LIRR (from Penn Station or Port Authority) to get to JFK.

The Washington Metro has a stop at Reagan National (DCA), and BART goes to SFO. Baltimore light rail goes to BWI Marshall.

DCA is an exception (the law is a little more complicated; I was simplifying for the sake of the comment).

The law applies to heavy rail, not light rail - the NYC subway system is entirely heavy rail.

The silver line extension (hopefully opening by thanksgiving) includes a stop at IAD (Dulles airport, the third airport in the DC area class B airspace) as well.

Yes, that's because the relevant law was repealed last year. The Silver Line was actually the impetus to finally end the policy.

However, transit infrastructure is locked in once, built, so almost every other transit system in the country has this issue, because it was built before 2021.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3v5j3/us-airports-no-longer...

Fascinating, til. Thanks!

>Unfortunately, federal law essentially prohibits cities from having subways connect directly to airports

Could you kindly provide a citation for this claim?

> And there was one time where, after waiting for the gate to open, already a couple hours late, the captain said that someone stole the airplane!!

Do you have a link to a news article? I find this hard to believe.

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