STN rail improvements
 

Crossrail to STN? Not a chance! It needs to be extended to Reading in the west and Southend in the east. Ending at Maidenhead and Shenfield is just crazy.

STN management appears to want a fast link, crossrail will be a commuter route.

No replies so I looked it up. £2 charge was introduced on November 9th.

BBC News - Stansted Airport introduces terminal drop-off charges

So there you are, as it has nothing to do with raising income.

http://www.stanstedairport.com/stati...facilities.pdf

I have to take public transport to an airport where I can fly to the places I need to go, I get that public transport from Stansted and need to be dropped off .......

I loath these drop off charges. They started at BHX were you had to get out of the car to go to a pay machine.
They came in at EMA, but at least you can chuck the pound in a funnel from your car seat.
Why on earth should you pay just to drop someone off?
Use public transport, you must be joking, we only have one bus per week past my place. It is this mentality which has ruined town centres. In France they advertise free parking in the town.
Now Stansted are charging two pound to drop off and they wonder why the place is half empty.
We are ruled by idiots!:ugh:

Crossrail to Stansted is a great idea. Stansted to Central London in 25 minutes would certainly attract a huge range of new airlines and would be a great way to ease the pressure on airport capacity in the south-east. This, and an owner who knows how to run airports properly are the only things needed to add another 10-15 million airport passengers anually to the south-east.

Gatwick to Central London is struggling to deliver what you see happening at STN and it's had that same rail link decades. It's not transport links that are the problem at STN, it more to do with the fact it's the airport the market never asked for, won't use and still shuns. The Ryanair operation exists as a last throw of the dice from BAA after every attempt to get airlines to move from LHR failed.

Yes Stansted is a terrible place. Awful in fact. That's why 18,052,843 people chose to fly from there in 2011. Can we now move on from all those 'doom-and-gloomers' who clog this thread up when their 'favourite' airport's threads have ground to pure boredom. Stansted is a great facility and is convenient for a lot of people, it might not be on your doorstep as your local airport but for a lot of people it is. :ugh:

Quite so.

Similarly, the traffic figures prove that the M25 is Britain's favourite motorway.

I think that Stansted, as an airport, is by far the best in the UK let alone London. I think it is a fantastically modern, spacious and just a pure breeze to travel through and I know many will disagree with me. God knows how!

I simply just desire what's best for Stansted even though I live 100 miles from it! It stuns me when some say that people just prefer flying from Gatwick and Luton. They show very little expertise in aviation because as you say 18 million people flew from there in 2011 and that's only down from 24 million in 2007 since BAA have just done simply an appaling job at managing the place since the start of the economic downturn.

It's about time that Stansted fights back as a competitive airport and the investment of improved rail services, or even better, Crossrail were connected to the airport for it to have some major advantage over Gatwick, ultimately leading to further competition, particularly with the airlines that are not low cost carriers. And that may also lead to a greater variety in the type of services Stansted offers! For example, in the longer run you may get carriers like United Airlines or the return of PIA or American Airlines thinking "hang on, we could offer a lower-cost option for travel to/from London than Heathrow whilst travel times to the capital are still competitive".

When will you people "get it"? It doesn't matter how wonderful the architecture is, if an airport is in the wrong place, it won't succeed. And Stansted hasn't succeeded. Take away Ryanair and see what's left - not a lot.

Why take away Ryanair? Because they are at STN only because the BAA offered them a subsidy in the '90s and now they can't move out because the capacity isn't there in the London area.

The nicest airports to use are small, friendly ones that few people use. Teesside, anyone?

And when will some of you not get the fact that it is the UK's 4th busiest airport in terms of passenger figures, thanks to RyanAir and the fact that people do wan't to use it. No one forces anyone to part with their credit card number when they're making a reservation.

Just the same old cr@p regurgitated week after week, month after month on here by the same old faces. Oh hang on lets wait on some wise words and an uploaded picture of a bear... Yawn.

Teesside??? And you say Stansted hasn't succeeded. Might want to take a look at Teesside's passenger stats. There's small and then there's small!

Stansted, being 30ish miles north east of London is not in the "wrong place." You can get to Embankment in less than 1 hour by road (it takes longer than that from Gatwick since most of the route is not motorway) and with rail improvements, Stansted would have better rail access as well. It doesn't matter how far an airport is from the place people want to go, as long as people can get to those places quickly and easily, and that is what the problem is at Stansted and needs adressing. I terms of the location, Stansted is no worse than Gatwick, Luton and Southend. Tbhey are all similar geographical distances from London and Stansted has a huge catchment area, all the way through East Anglia, London and the Midlands. Gatwick is in the "wrong place" for anybody who lives north of London!

And also LGS6753, you may want to distinguish the difference between architecture and infrastructure. Two very different things and of which the latter is vital for an airport to "succeed".

We've been using STN as our main airport for years (admittedly nearly always leisure) and have preferred it to all the other London airports (apart from LCY) for ease of use. For anyone living in NE and E London it is definitely the easiest airport to access (ignoring LCY) although this may change with Crossrail 1. It is looking a bit down-at-heel at the moment but I put that down to the whole sale palaver.
The London / STN / Cambridge artery has been targeted as a major growth area, so there is no reason why it shouldn't continue to flourish. It is quite a long way from the rest of the UK though and certainly the catchment area for LGW / LHR and possibly even LTN is more affluent for the time being.

It's highly unlikely that Crossrail 1 will be modified to include a spur to STN. This wouldn't make it more accessible anyway because there isn't spare capacity for faster trains. This will have to be built and indeed is planned (not budgeted) for some time in the medium term. Crossrail 2, which will be essential if HS2 is built to ease access to Euston, would probably include a link to STN. But I doubt that this will increase access speed much either, without the aforementioned infrastructure improvements.
From a personal point of view, the worst thing about rail access to STN is the price, not the speed. I could easily catch the train every time I go there but don't because it's too expensive. Coaches are half the price and only marginally slower. Even if the train was only 30 mins I wouldn't catch it. Not an issue for most business users but I suspect that most business users live further West and North, though that's changing as the East becomes more affluent.

Well areas like Herfordshire and Cambridgshire, as well as parts of Essex are very affluent areas and with them all having Stansted as their local airport, they are faced with easyJet and Ryanair as their only choices. There is certainly enough demand for full serive and long haul services from Stansted, but the rail connections and BAA's managment of the airport has held it back.

I would say that the flag carriers, especially for long haul travel can do well at Stansted and we have seen some examples of it in the past. The major reason why the flag carriers find it hard to use Stansted is because of the onward travel to London. I'm sure that if Stansted was more accessible by rail from London than say Gatwick, we would start to see the shift of some traffic into Stansted.

Stansted is also in need of an airline that could feed services for connections if that was to happen. That is Stansted's biggest issue in my opinion when it comes to long haul. However it does seem crazy that the amount of people who live close to or have to drive past Stansted to catch a long haul flight can not any longer connect. Best option for this would be a return of KLM or LH to feed via Amsterdam or Frankfurt. Only time will tell. There will be no quick fix but I'm pretty certain things will improve after the sale.

Quote: "The nicest airports to use are small, friendly ones that few people use. Teesside, anyone?"

Would love to use Teesside again when heading to the Middlesbrough area but "that particular avenue of pleasure" (to quote Basil Fawlty) has been cut off. Regretably there are no longer flights to/from Heathrow.



To those banging on about crossrail, which part of commuter line do you not understand? It needs a faster fast link, not a commuter line with several stops!

Stansted's "problem" is not being in the wrong place (although in some respects it is), or about looking shabby, or about bad surface links, or anything else. It does what it does well, and that is shorthaul no frills pax flights and cargo flights.

To those of you wanting it to be like a hub, or become a hub, you are expecting too much. Forget it, there isn't sufficient connectivity and never will be.

If you want a hub, go to Heathrow, it is as simple as that!

a new bidder?
 

Malaysians join £1bn race for Stansted deal - Telegraph


This could shake things up a bit. They seem to be trying to tempt out asecond company with experience of running an airport whichmust demonstrate that they are not happy with the calibre of the currentbidders.

That is interesting news. I wonder if they will want to go down the KLIA route with STN? (Magnificant facilities in the main terminal, the large dominant LCC operating probably for a pittance out of a shed on a remote part of the airfield?!

From where I live in north London all of the 6 London airports are roughly equal in being pretty easy for me to get to.

I travel for work and for leisure but don’t work in aviation. As a punter I know the differences between all 6 and I pay my money and make my choices. As I say, from a door to door perspective I am spoiled for choice.

Aside from London City which is a sinch to get to, Stansted by road or train ought to be the most accessible in terms of distance and time and therefore my preferred choice– but for leisure travel at least, Gatwick wins for me.

Why?

Train wise as jdcg has posted – it's expensive. Also, if something goes wrong on the lines in and out of Liverpool Street the service seems to shut down and you are stuffed. Stansted Express trains always appear rammed full.

Driving – Gatwick has a better choice of parking options, and the transfers to/from the terminal are less painful.

As a passenger I also think that Gatwick has improved massively because of the investment from the new owners – so scope for future improvement at Stansted when the sale goes through, but not guaranteed. Luton has never been owned by BAA, but various changes of owner/operator have never IMO positively impacted on the experience of using Luton as a passenger. Its not a foregone conclusion that removing BAA’s involvement at Stansted will see everything sorted for evermore.

As for Cross Rail. In just over 5 years time Cross Rail is going to be a game changer across London and the south east of England, and will reduce the time it takes to get to all sorts of places (and interchanges) for a very large number of people. Example - London City to Heathrow in not much more than an hour.

Cross Rail might mean that its easy for more people to get to Stansted – it will also mean that it will be easier for passengers who only currently use Stansted to fly from somewhere else.