Comment by throwaway2037
3 days ago
> 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.
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.
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-...
No idea, just answering the “Why not pick a location not within a "major airport flight path"? It seems much cheaper.” question.
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.