London Airports
I just got back from a trip to the UK. The destination is actually called “London” but I hate to say that since I was no where near the city. London has four airports: Heathrow in the West is the largest airport in Europe, Gatwick in the South, City Airport in the middle and Stansted in the North-East which is the budget airport. Our company office is closest to Stansted, so that is the London airport I use the most. London is a big place and if you are doing more than just changing planes in Heathrow (be sure to plan a lot of time for that btw), it pays to fly to the airport closest to your final destination.
As the name implies, City Airport is the closest to Central London, but as it is rather small, there are a limited number of flights and destinations served. It used to be that Gatwick was the next quickest alternative to get into Central London (30 minute train ride), but Heathrow has added a high-speed raillink, with trips to Central London taking only 15 minutes. Stansted, being the budget alternative, takes 46 minutes on a train to Central London.
Men’s fashion update: if you are planning on flying to the UK anytime soon, be sure to pack a pink shirt. I saw 4 pink shirts (both dress shirts and polos) in the first 5 rows of my plane. Pink for men, at least in the UK, is hot.
My return flight tonight was out of Heathrow, and as usual, the airport was a zoo. Lines and people everywhere, delays due to weather…
Which airport do you use when flying to London? Do you have a choice?
Image from rst.gsfc.nasa.gov.
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POSTED IN: Travel
1 opinion for London Airports
Chris
Mar 16, 2008 at 7:41 am
Having just flown in to and out of Gatwick, I have to say it was a pretty miserable experience. I’ve gotten to the point where I rather enjoy flying into second-tier airports (like Hamburg instead of Frankfurt), but of course the ability to do that depends heavily on your final destination.
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