I believe Thomas Cook will be trying long haul at the end of this year or the beginning of next.
I didn't reckon on the shopping area. It's nothing special. I'd say about 80% of passengers can't buy duty free goods anyway, so seems pointless to me.
In fact I thought Stansted was in general a rubbish airport. Hardly anywhere to eat and you had to wait half an hour to get a table (and this isn't even high season). Very few shops. It took an hour to get through security. The E-passport gates were closed on the way back to another huge queue with only 3 desks open.
Nowhere to watch aircraft and just a generally depressing feel to the terminal. Past the departure lounge it is painfully apparent this is a very underused airport. We boarded from gate 2 and I think on the way there there was only one other gate being used out of several dozen. So much space for so few flights. We we're flying in the early afternoon so hardly at a quiet time of the day.
I normally enjoy the airport experience and you normally get an exciting buzz from the atmosphere, but this was just dull. I really hope STN can grab some new airlines or at least increase the use from minority airlines so it can fulfill it's potential so to speak.
We normally fly LGW for our holidays (depending on airline and destination), but went out of STN as it was cheaper. I think we've both decided to just go to LGW next time unless STN is remarkably cheaper.