Not sure why the hell I am sending this, when enjoying a wonderful evening over looking Stari Grad harbour, on Hvar Island with a beer and sun setting behind the mountains!

But pleased to report flew to Split this morning with Wizzair and only too 3 mins in mini bus to transfer from Central Car Storage to terminal at 4.45am, so yesterday seems an unexplained one off!

Never usually travel through LTN at this time of year, security was efficient and swift. But departures was hell! Queues wrapping round shops to be served, and no seats in general. Eat my Pret standing and 15 mins to be served in Smiths!

The Split service was busy so hopefully will returm next summer!

Once again, LTN seems to be suffering from 'fragile airline syndrome'. A Blue Air 737 was impounded last week, apparently the second such action, and has been replaced by a leased MD83 (sound familiar?). And then there's the Examinership (Administration) at Aer Arann.

I hope both survive and return to health, but I fear we're in for another difficult winter, economically speaking.

Is there anything positive in the wind for 2011? Will Easy's new CEO repair the spat with Luton, and start the EZY expansion again?

I wait with bated breath....

Wizz LTN-BRQ (Brno, CZ) from Dec, 3x weekly.

Got back from Dubrovnik today around lunch time on the Wizzair service, and as I was getting on to the bus to the car park...

Heard this deafening noise and was pleasantly surpised to see a 727 thundering down the runway. Boy was he loud, not heard anything that loud taking off from Luton in a long time...

LADACAN must be inking the paper with a noise complaint as we speak to the airport. Anyone else see or hear the plane taking off.

Is it a regular visitor?

727-200 at LTN
 

Yes, I saw it but it wasn't that noisy! Came in from QLA (Lasham), and out on a corporate flight with a few pax. US-registered.

In answer to the question, no - 727s are now rare at LTN and probably throughout most of Europe. Ten years ago, there were a number of privately-owned examples, but they've dwindled to the very occasional now. Must be expensive beasts to operate.

Glad to hear of the new Wizz route as well.

All the best,
Victor Oscar

Not content with charging £4.50 for 30 minutes parking in the short term car park there is an additional charge of £1.50 if you use a card to pay the fee.

The rumour is that the slick new airport access and traffic lights were designed by the Spanish construction company who own the airport- they just forgot we drive on the other side of the road.

Most of the hold-ups seem to be from the cars pulling up on the island and treating it like a short-term drop off. The bus lane has now become a car park. They'll be putting those mobile car wash-while you wait stations in there next...

[/QUOTE]The rumour is that the slick new airport access and traffic lights were designed by the Spanish construction company who own the airport- they just forgot we drive on the other side of the road. [QUOTE]

What rubbish.

The issue is not the £1 drop off fee, although this does not help but the figure of eight entry and exit to the drop off area. Its very design only allows a set number of cars to enter and leave the area every hour. When cars pass this figure there are queues.

When the drop off area was not controlled by barriers cars would park up indefinitely while their drivers waited for passengers, which caused congestion. At least that problem has gone away now. A person being dropped off or picked up on the roundabout has been an issue since the drop off area was moved away from the terminal so is nothing new.

What is new is that since the kerb side barriers have been installed up to the Holiday Inn anyone wanting to walk from the mid term car park now has to walk in the road or has to leap over the barrier to get to a pavement.

Indeed - you can watch this as you sit stationary in the queue of traffic. Except they generally can't get over the fence, because they are in the mid-term so mostly have large suitcases. Down the road they have to walk.

This is not great when traffic is moving - have you seen the speed some of the buses go under the tunnel? How long before we have the next passenger fatality?

August Passenger Figures
 

Figures for August have just been released show 978,968 passengers used the airport in August down 3.3 per cent on last year. The rolling 12 month figure is 8,710,117 down 7.3 per cent. This shows that Luton still holds on to fifth place just in front of Birmingham and Edinburgh.

Not too bad then, all things considered.

Rumours circulating that could indicate ACDL extending thier concession agreement, which in turn could signal infrastructure investment airside.

Hi folks, I don't normally use the airport on early morning flights but have a TOM on Sunday week at 06:55 Will the Duty Free be open at that time? Given that one can no longer take the stuff with you?

Thanks.

LTN Duty Free
 

Yes

Fast Eddie

Duty Free opens at around 4am with all the other shops opening between 4:30 and 5:00

Thanks LTNman, I don't usually do mornings.

Wizz Belgrade
 

With British Airways pulling off the Belgrade route from 30th November - apprently they could not make it pay - there's a surprise - this leaves JAT with a daily B737 service to Heathrow and Wizz three times weekly to Luton on the London route - would not be too surprised to see Wizz increasing frequency as I hear load factors are pretty good - but again it depends on how much people are paying for their ticket. Would imagine easy must be looking at a service from Gatwick in the not too distant future either.

11/9 - Queued for an hour at passport control on return to UK at LTN.

I know they had a few flights arrive at about the same time (about 0030) due to ATC delays over France. We were due at 2320 on 10/9.

I have never seen a queue like it at any other airport. Prior to that I thought LPL was the worst !

Nothing to do with the airport but with the government agency that runs the border control