There seems to be a conflict here. The author of the linked article interprets the guideline, "New airports can only be added by OpenBSD developers who have visited an airport and thereby have verified its existence," as only requiring that you have been to the airport, not necessarily having flown from:
> Once again, the more astute reader will not have missed the fact that the rules do not stipulate any flying requirements. Neither did henning@, who not long after airport.7 was committed, added an entry for XFW, (the Airbus factory) which he had visited but not flown from.
Fair enough - he wrote the requirement, after all.
However, the Caveat in the man page seems to contradict this, and indicates that you do have to fly in:
> There are also railway stations with IATA codes. These may not be listed, except if someone landed there by plane and survived to update the file.
I don't see a requirement that the OpenBSD developer needs to have flown into the railway station. Just that someone survived landing a plane at the railway station for it to count as an airport.
Up until very recently United had codeshares with Amtrak on the north-east corridor, and could even rebook onto Amtrak in the event of flight disruption. Lufthansa still offers connections to and from Deutsche Bahn on the same ticket (https://www.lufthansa.com/tr/en/rail-and-fly)
I hope to never see the day that air traffic is so disrupted that getting rebooked on Amtrak seems like a better option. For a variety of reasons, Amtrak's adherence to schedules is abysmal.
Has anybody here had this happen? 9-11 is the last occasion I could imagine where this could possibly be a win.
Amtrak's adherence to schedules varies by line -- the problem on many of them is getting trapped behind freight trains, but on the Northeast Corridor specifically, Amtrak itself owns most of the track, and the rest is shared with other passenger rail operations (various commuter rail), so they're about as reliable as airlines (which themselves are... not infrequently disrupted by weather).
the problem on many of them is getting trapped behind freight trains
I recently read in a railfan magazine that this is becoming worse because of the supply chain mess.
Fright train companies are running longer trains because of higher demand. Longer trains run slower, because there's only so many engines to go around.
Making things worse — slow freight trains would often pull onto sidings to let fast passenger trains pass. Now the freight trains are too long to fit into the sidings, so more and more the passenger trains have to wait.
Snowstorms in the north-east will frequently disrupt flights far more than trains. It's about 4 hours from Boston to New York, I'd take that over being delayed 2 days.
> Which makes you wonder why some railway stations would have a IATA code.
Such locations, which can also be bus stations and ferry ports, are known as "intermodal locations".
TL;DR its for ticketing purposes to enable flight and rail/bus/ferry legs to be issued on the same ticket.
Or at least that's the theory. To be honest its probably going be extinct in due course, given the complexities of integrating the airline world with the modern private railways etc. In most cases its just easier and more sensible to ticket seperateley. Plus some of the quaint old-fashioned things such as being able to check-through bags are becoming few and far between due to security and other aspects (e.g. disappearance of station porters and baggage cars).
Or sometimes it's just a bus stop, in a car park, with perhaps a small portaloo and a hot dog stand. Several times I've booked a through ticket from Salzburg to London Heathrow via Munich and the Salzburg-Munich leg was a bus ride that included a 'layover' at ZPR. According to [0] "Airport of Rosenheim is the most important airport of Rosenheim, Germany. It is modern and one of the largest airport of the Europe. Airport of Rosenheim is important for people and goverment of Germany." But actually it's just a lonely bus stop in a car park just off the motorway.
Sigh, bot-generated content litters the whole internet. I was doing some address completion stuff and learned about virtual ZIP codes in my country, i.e. ZIP codes that are just for routing and don't have a geographical area, but if you look them up on the Internet of course there are sites that say "$ZIP is a city in the state of $STATE".
Hey Elon, can you pay $15 billion to get rid of bots on the Internet?
to be pendantic, all (US) ZIP codes are just for routing. Any correspondence to a geographical area is an artifact of this, and subject to change. Also, it is possible for two ZIP codes to overlap geographically.
In particular some numbered zones are entirely contained geographically within others. In some places in the US, there's a ZIP for delivery to private homes and businesses but another for delivery within the Postal Service network, including delivery to post office boxes. The one I remember most readily is Quincy, Illinois. The city is 62301 and the surrounding county 62305, but PO boxes are 62306, located within the post offices that sit within the 62301 zone.
If memory serves me right, it's still used in Germany for trips outbound from FRA. You buy a ticket with a train somewhere → FRA leg, and an airplane FRA → somewhere-else.
It gets even better. One of the big Software Systems at Fraport has a „Flight“ class, which exposes the method „isTrain“…
On another german airport the same class was extended by a „isTruck“ method for parcel trucks…
I’d have thought integrated security would be far more secure since the baggage goes and stays behind the secure boundary until the conclusion of the trip vs being retrieved, checked in, retrieved, checked in, etc
My favourite modern intermodal baggage transport is in Japan.
They have a small number of specialist baggage couriers called Takuhaibin (宅配便). These couriers will take your bags between any two destinations of your choice (Hotel-Hotel,Hotel-Airport etc.) for a reasonable fee. The pick-up and destination can (basically) be anything in Japan with a postal address.
Its not true check-through as you still have to pick up your bags from the counter landside at the airport and take them to the check-in counter but the distance is minimal since you'll already be in the right terminal and on the right floor.
(Technically for the pedants out there, Takuhaibin are also a general parcel company too. But unlike, say UPS or FedEx, a Takuhaibin will take your baggage, your furniture, your clothes or pretty much anything else as long as its safe and legal)
These couriers will take your bags between any two destinations of your choice (Hotel-Hotel,Hotel-Airport etc.) for a reasonable fee
We have these in America, too. They're call couriers. They'll even pick up your luggage that went to the wrong airport in a different city and bring it to you at your hotel in the right city. (Happened to me with a bicycle.)
unlike, say UPS or FedEx, a Takuhaibin will take your baggage, your furniture, your clothes or pretty much anything else as long as its safe and legal
This sounds exactly like UPS and FedEx. I shipped baggage, furniture, and clothing via UPS as recently as last year. I even had a service come over and pack it up for me.
UPS and FedEx will ship anything. How do you think elephants and whales get from zoo to zoo?
I think the key is that you can skip the "pack it up" step - UPS won't ship many things that would survive shipment just fine unless they're wrapped in a box.
UPS and FedEx freight or LTL (less than truckload) is another story entirely.
> Once again, the more astute reader will not have missed the fact that the rules do not stipulate any flying requirements. Neither did henning@, who not long after airport.7 was committed, added an entry for XFW, (the Airbus factory) which he had visited but not flown from.
Fair enough - he wrote the requirement, after all.
However, the Caveat in the man page seems to contradict this, and indicates that you do have to fly in:
> There are also railway stations with IATA codes. These may not be listed, except if someone landed there by plane and survived to update the file.