Author's product rating: 
| Advantages: |
Less congested, easily accessible |
| Disadvantages: |
Not as many routes as Heathrow/Gatwick |
| Recommend to potential buyers: |
yes |
Stansted is London’s third international airport, situated on the Herts/Essex border in between London and Cambridge. Many people only see Heathrow and Gatwick as the main players in the London area. However Stansted is a more modern, less congested viable alternative.
Getting to Stansted is very easy indeed, being conveniently located and easily accessible from most places. It is situated next to Junction 8 of the M11, which makes accessing London, East Anglia and the north, very simple. For those who don’t drive (or perhaps don’t relish the thought of paying to park!) there is a railway station situated under the terminal. From here you can catch the Stansted Express into London Liverpool Street. The trains run roughly every quarter of an hour during the day, and less often in the early morning/evening. The journey time is about 45 minutes and I believe this is either non-stop or only one stop. There is a service that stops at most of the towns on the way into London, which runs every hour. In addition to the train service, there are also plenty of coaches providing shuttles to and from the airport.
If you do decide to park your pride and joy at the airport, there are two options. Firstly, there is a short stay car park which is situated next to the terminal building. There are multiple zones, which all vary in their distance to the terminal, but in general the walk is not too far. However for the privilege of parking so close, you are ripped off in parking charges! This facility is only viable if you are picking up or dropping off passengers, with the charge for 30 minutes being a hefty £1.40. The highest tariff is £12, which gets you between 12 and 24 hours parking. Although this sounds expensive, it really isn’t too bad, considering that when I travelled from Luton a couple of weeks ago, the price was £35 for two days (the company was paying!!) Briefly going back to the point about picking up passengers……..Stansted do not allow you to collect passengers from outside the terminal, so you are forced to use the short stay car park area - although I do believe that they give you some free time.
The second choice is the long stay car park which is situated at the very edge of the airport - miles from the terminal! It is actually very near to where the old terminal used to be, and is next to the Hilton hotel. There are plenty of spaces and a shuttle bus that runs to and from the terminal every 15 minutes. As for the price, they charge about £5.50 per day, which is much more reasonable than in short stay!!
So, where can you fly to from Stansted? Admittedly, the routes aren’t as plentiful as Heathrow or Gatwick, but Stansted certainly holds it own. The main emphasis is on short/medium haul and domestic flights. It is ideal for business flights being the main low-cost airline base - it is the hub of Buzz and Go and now has limited services from Easyjet. It is also very good for Mediterranean charter flights. Most of the big charter airline names appear at Stansted, including Britannia, Air 2000, Airtours and JMC, offering the same European destinations as Gatwick or Manchester. The only area where Stansted is not a major player is long haul. There are flights all over the world, but the services are no where near as frequent, nor wide reaching as at Heathrow or Gatwick. This is mainly due to the big international airlines, such as British Airways, not using Stansted. Although I see this as a positive thing because if they did, it would be an overcrowded Heathrow clone.
The terminal itself is mainly one level, with only the railway and coach stations being underneath. The first thing that hits you about the terminal building as you walk in, is how spacious and airy it feels. It is extremely modern (it was only built in the early 90’s) and thanks to a glass panel roof, reflects light around very well. The other thing that is noticeable is how easy it is to get around! I find that although Heathrow and Gatwick are impressive, they are like mazes - full of corridors and other places to lose passengers.
As you walk in the main doors, there are aisles of check in desks in front of you, which are all clearly labelled and easily identifiable from the information on the large flight screens. In common with most airports these days, there are no flight announcements and the only way to find out when you are leaving is to watch the screens carefully. Check in is easy and the area is designed so that the queuing doesn’t disrupt the terminal too much and make the place look cluttered (as other airports do!)
After check in, you have the choice of visiting some of the land side shops or eateries, or going straight through to departures. There aren’t a massive array of shops and restaurants, but most of the main names appear. These include WH Smith, The Body Shop, and Boots. As for food, there are a few café’s, as well as a Burger King. Arrivals are on the same level as departures and there are plenty of seats available for arriving and departing passengers.
After departures, you are presented with the typical departure lounge, containing newsagents, electrical and clothing shops, as well as the duty free with the unmistakable whiff of perfume seeping out! Again, although not very large, the area is adequate for the airport and seems to cope well. When it is time to depart you board a skytrain which takes you from the terminal over to the satellite gates - this is unless you are on a domestic flight in which case there is a walkway over to that satellite. Once in the satellite you are really just waiting to board, so the café’s and shops are of less relevance, although still present. The only thing that is left to say about the satellites is that they provide panoramic views of the aprons and runway, if you like watching aircraft.
So what is the Stansted experience like overall? Well, although I live 5 minutes away from Stansted in the next town (Bishop’s Stortford) I haven’t flown from there as much as I would have liked to. I always find my passage through the airport to be trouble free with the exception of the delays!! (which isn’t their fault) Stansted is so easy that I find that it doesn’t feel as though you are going on holiday! I am used to rushing around busy airports…..you don’t get this with Stansted.
Stansted ticks along nicely and is a very fast growing airport. I believe the annual passenger figure is sitting at over 10 million now. Recently they have embarked upon a £200 million expansion project to extend the terminal building, aprons and airport access, to bring the annual capacity to 15 million passengers. There is plenty more expansion planned and as Stansted has a lot of free land, I’m sure it will catch up with Gatwick eventually, which has run out of space.
Anyway, I intended this opinion to be shorter and I’ve gone on for too long now. All that’s left to say is that if you are looking for a better start to your holiday or trip, then Stansted is an ideal departure point, being both conveniently located and less congested, it really is a viable alternative (god I sound like an advert!!!) The only disadvantage (for me living next to it more so) is that it is the designated hi-jack airport for the UK!!
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