Azerbijan Airways fly daily direct to Baku from Heathrow, despite what the BBC say about the lack of direct flights! Needless to say, the flights around the date of the final have sold out.

Clubs do not get the same allocation of tickets that they did once, so unlikely to be the largest ever airlift out of the London area sadly.

I will say that the new Drop Off/Pick Up worked pretty well. That is as far as the exit barrier with money basket or touch card for rapid movement went. Happily, at 05:15 it was fairly quiet but the system of the entrance path branching three times and thus cutting across three lines of departing traffic - was a reliably LLA b@lls up. In heavy traffic it must be terrible.

Later on in the year the drop off zone will move into the ground floor of the new multi-story. Original plans show 2 entrance lanes with the pay barriers moved to inside the building. My construction update photo in post 2443 shows what must be a different layout as there seems to be an exist coming out of the bottom of the plan. Also what seems like another set of lifts are going in.

The enclosed layout shows 5 sets of pedestrian crossings in the drop off zone which was a total disaster before when there was 4. The present temporary layout with 2 lanes of traffic choosing 1 of 5 drop off lanes with no pedestrian crossings due to U lanes actually is not too bad apart from cars dropping off in the U by the kerbs so nothing else can get past due to the tight 180 degree turns.

I would imagine the final layout will be substantially different from these plans but we will have to see if they also remove the pedestrian crossings.

https://i.imgur.com/9ugxVNf.jpg

There has been rumours for probably the last 10-15 years that flights to Pakistan, India and Bangladesh will start from the airport, usually from a fantasical start up airlines, that never gets off the ground or even begin taking bookings, with a website that looks like it has been created by a teenager! Many of these rumours usually orginate from foreign news websites with factually inforrect information.
I'm sure many of these rumours about these long haul flights the Asian/Indian sub-continent are even news to the airport.
If Im not mistaken, about 5-10 years ago their was an airline that lasted a few months offering 2-3 flights a week to Stockholm Skavsta, and was either a connecting flight or was a re-fuelling stop and then continued to Pakistan.

I'm amazed that FlyPop is still around. I seem to recall their trying to start an airline between the UK and India/Pakistan several years ago but it all went a bit strange (I think early shareholders would get discounted flights and the company would donate a lot of their profit to charity) and eventually came to nothing

I see the airport has managed to cram 17 million passengers through its doors during the 12 months to April helped by 1.5 million passengers using the airport in April, a 10 per cent increase on April 2018 helped no doubt by Easter being in April this year.

Haven't seen any traffic delays this year and security seems quicker than Southend. Definitely an improvement over last year.

Quite a lot of extra flights scheduled for the tiddlywinks match in Spain. At present 22 Iberia (6 x A330 plus 321,320,319), 5 Air Europa (738), 3 Albastar (734) and 2 Air Nostrum CRJ spread over May 31st - June 2nd. To say nothing of squadrons of exec jets.

Landed at 16.05 on FR3514,breezed through passport control and outside at 16.25 to catch bus to Car Hire. A very pleasant experience probably never to be that lucky again !!!!

Not yet officially confirmed a Hi-Fly A330 to/from Baku on 28/30 May due to no slots available at Gatwick.

Are these booked during the day only or have night time restrictions been relaxed temporary?

Lots of night flights for the return.

I cannot imagine any flights arriving on the Sunday morning before 0630 because of no stands available plus the nighttime restrictions.Also on one of the travel company websites who are selling the seats are saying that Madrid also has some nighttime restrictions but whether that is true I do not know.

Thank you for the explanation LTNman.

Threats of strikes there every other week...cleaners...handlers...security.