LTNman
11th Apr 2018, 04:35
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/comment/in-defence-of-stansted-airport-snobbery/
When 23 Russian diplomats were expelled from the UK in the wake of the Salisbury spy poisoning, social media was abuzz with banter that having Stansted as their point of departure was as harsh a punitive measure as any economic sanction imposed on our eastern adversaries.
The joke is, in case you missed it, that flying from Essex’s claim to a London airport is a tortuous, humiliating experience, and that anyone with any self-respect would only ever grace the likes of Heathrow or City.
Such snobbery is no rarity in a city that boasts six airports (seven if you count London Oxford) of varying stature.
Broadly speaking, Heathrow, the seventh busiest terminal in the world, is more than acceptable because of its prestige, and a bona fide Tube connection; Gatwick is, too, thanks to its standing as second in the UK and a location suiting the green, monied hills of Surrey. City is a different beast and synonymous with the financial capital from which it takes its name. It is an airport choice that raises eyebrows as impressed as they are curious: are you far more important than I think you are?
Then we come to the butt of jokes: Luton and Stansted.
The northern pair - Luton to the west, Stansted to the east - seem to elicit caveats if not jokes when visited by a certain type of traveller: it was the only airport serving Bydgoszcz; I can stay at my gran’s the night before; I wanted to mix with the Great Unwashed.
But these two airports are key to supporting the growing desire for air travel in the south of England and help reduce the already-low cost of flying. Without them, low-cost airlines such as Ryanair and Easyjet, as well as the likes of Jet2 and Wizz, would not have had the room - or cash - to establish themselves and offer £20 flights to the Continent.
Luton certainly suffers the worst image problem. Not least because of its link to a city regularly appearing on the podium of Britain’s Crap Town awards (in 2004 it was voted the worst town in the UK). The Bedfordshire hub is also without its own train station, so all travellers from London must board a permanent rail-replacement shuttle bus from the Parkway (though this will be rectified in 2021 with the introduction of £200million direct link).
An eternity-long redevelopment of the terminal building has busied the airport approach with road works and hoardings, while the dirtying orange of the Easyjet HQ monstrosity does nothing for holiday ambiance. And is it just me, or does it always rain in Luton?
But, jeez, it’s only an airport. Once inside, your experience will not be so different to other London terminals as to rage at Luton for being “a canker on the soul” (Anthony Reed, Google reviews, 2018), or for boasting the “worst customer service in the world” (Kit Bienias, Google reviews, 2018). And I can bet that your flight is either cheaper than flying from anywhere else, or does not exist elsewhere.
Don’t get me wrong, Luton is not perfect (£3 for 10 minutes drop-off parking) but it did drop that £1 charge for security liquid bags. So, it’s trying - plus it’s the only London airport that doesn’t offer a rip-off “express” link from the capital that’s twice as expensive as a normal rail ticket but only seven minutes faster (this may change in 2021).
Stansted, on the other hand, is far more pleasant than airport snobs would have you believe.
The airport does boast its own train station, just 30 minutes from the Victoria Line at Tottenham Hale, or a little longer into Liverpool Street, and is currently gleaming from an £80 million redevelopment of its terminal building, originally designed by Norman Foster.
The Essex airport now offers as wide and impressive a range of food and drink options as its south London brethren. Sure, it is a smaller airport, with just the one runway, though the walk through duty-free is as long as a second, but it welcomes 26 million people a year and its growth rate is higher than that of Gatwick. It will reach its current cap of 35 million in five years and has applied for permission to raise its capacity to 43 million, just two short of Gatwick today. Last year, flag carrier British Airways announced it would begin flying from Stansted for the first time in its history.
When discussing this article with friends, one ventured of Stansted: "It’s ok if you want to fly to some obscure eastern European city”. Or New York, or Toronto, or Dubai, or Jamaica. With the growth of low-cost, long-haul, smaller airports are offering airlines a chance to challenge the status quo and it is surely not long until Luton champions its own transatlantic route.
As the saga of Heathrow’s third airport trundles on, the likes of Stansted, Luton, and even Southend, have never been more important to the capital’s holidaymakers. Being openly snooty about a friend or colleague’s travel destination would never be considered acceptable, while pomposity surrounding flying budget airlines is on the wane.
It’s time we embrace our second-choice airports, as well as the third, fourth and fifth.
So there you have it. Those with empty pockets that moan about the two London Airports should keep:oh::oh::oh: AS without those airports they would probably be not flying even from airports like Gatwick.
Luton and Stansted combined had almost 42 million passengers last year.
When 23 Russian diplomats were expelled from the UK in the wake of the Salisbury spy poisoning, social media was abuzz with banter that having Stansted as their point of departure was as harsh a punitive measure as any economic sanction imposed on our eastern adversaries.
The joke is, in case you missed it, that flying from Essex’s claim to a London airport is a tortuous, humiliating experience, and that anyone with any self-respect would only ever grace the likes of Heathrow or City.
Such snobbery is no rarity in a city that boasts six airports (seven if you count London Oxford) of varying stature.
Broadly speaking, Heathrow, the seventh busiest terminal in the world, is more than acceptable because of its prestige, and a bona fide Tube connection; Gatwick is, too, thanks to its standing as second in the UK and a location suiting the green, monied hills of Surrey. City is a different beast and synonymous with the financial capital from which it takes its name. It is an airport choice that raises eyebrows as impressed as they are curious: are you far more important than I think you are?
Then we come to the butt of jokes: Luton and Stansted.
The northern pair - Luton to the west, Stansted to the east - seem to elicit caveats if not jokes when visited by a certain type of traveller: it was the only airport serving Bydgoszcz; I can stay at my gran’s the night before; I wanted to mix with the Great Unwashed.
But these two airports are key to supporting the growing desire for air travel in the south of England and help reduce the already-low cost of flying. Without them, low-cost airlines such as Ryanair and Easyjet, as well as the likes of Jet2 and Wizz, would not have had the room - or cash - to establish themselves and offer £20 flights to the Continent.
Luton certainly suffers the worst image problem. Not least because of its link to a city regularly appearing on the podium of Britain’s Crap Town awards (in 2004 it was voted the worst town in the UK). The Bedfordshire hub is also without its own train station, so all travellers from London must board a permanent rail-replacement shuttle bus from the Parkway (though this will be rectified in 2021 with the introduction of £200million direct link).
An eternity-long redevelopment of the terminal building has busied the airport approach with road works and hoardings, while the dirtying orange of the Easyjet HQ monstrosity does nothing for holiday ambiance. And is it just me, or does it always rain in Luton?
But, jeez, it’s only an airport. Once inside, your experience will not be so different to other London terminals as to rage at Luton for being “a canker on the soul” (Anthony Reed, Google reviews, 2018), or for boasting the “worst customer service in the world” (Kit Bienias, Google reviews, 2018). And I can bet that your flight is either cheaper than flying from anywhere else, or does not exist elsewhere.
Don’t get me wrong, Luton is not perfect (£3 for 10 minutes drop-off parking) but it did drop that £1 charge for security liquid bags. So, it’s trying - plus it’s the only London airport that doesn’t offer a rip-off “express” link from the capital that’s twice as expensive as a normal rail ticket but only seven minutes faster (this may change in 2021).
Stansted, on the other hand, is far more pleasant than airport snobs would have you believe.
The airport does boast its own train station, just 30 minutes from the Victoria Line at Tottenham Hale, or a little longer into Liverpool Street, and is currently gleaming from an £80 million redevelopment of its terminal building, originally designed by Norman Foster.
The Essex airport now offers as wide and impressive a range of food and drink options as its south London brethren. Sure, it is a smaller airport, with just the one runway, though the walk through duty-free is as long as a second, but it welcomes 26 million people a year and its growth rate is higher than that of Gatwick. It will reach its current cap of 35 million in five years and has applied for permission to raise its capacity to 43 million, just two short of Gatwick today. Last year, flag carrier British Airways announced it would begin flying from Stansted for the first time in its history.
When discussing this article with friends, one ventured of Stansted: "It’s ok if you want to fly to some obscure eastern European city”. Or New York, or Toronto, or Dubai, or Jamaica. With the growth of low-cost, long-haul, smaller airports are offering airlines a chance to challenge the status quo and it is surely not long until Luton champions its own transatlantic route.
As the saga of Heathrow’s third airport trundles on, the likes of Stansted, Luton, and even Southend, have never been more important to the capital’s holidaymakers. Being openly snooty about a friend or colleague’s travel destination would never be considered acceptable, while pomposity surrounding flying budget airlines is on the wane.
It’s time we embrace our second-choice airports, as well as the third, fourth and fifth.
So there you have it. Those with empty pockets that moan about the two London Airports should keep:oh::oh::oh: AS without those airports they would probably be not flying even from airports like Gatwick.
Luton and Stansted combined had almost 42 million passengers last year.