London Stansted Airport
Stansted Airport is a medium-sized passenger airport with a single runway, located in the English county of Essex about thirty miles north of London. The airport is owned and operated by BAA plc and its IATA airport code is STN. It is the third-busiest airport in the London area after Heathrow Airport and Gatwick Airport. Several budget airlines such as Ryanair and easyJet maintain bases at Stansted, and Volga-Dnepr often station a large Antonov An-124 freighter to the northwest of the main runway ready to carry outsize cargoes. FedEx is a dominant operator of trans-Atlantic freighter services.
History
Stansted was constructed by the United States Army in 1942 as a bomber base. By 1944, over 600 aircraft were stationed there. The base played a major role in the Battle of Normandy.
After the war, the base was not needed; it was transferred to the Air Ministry in 1947. The US military returned in 1954 to extend the runway for a possible transfer to NATO but this was never realised and the airport ended up under BAA control in 1966.
Initially, the airport was used by holiday charter operators wishing to escape the higher costs associated with operating from Heathrow and Gatwick. From the outset, however, BAA and the British government planned to develop Stansted into London's third airport, to relieve Heathrow and Gatwick of excess congestion in the future. The airport's first terminal building opened in 1969 and was expanded the next year to handle the growing number of passengers.
In 1984, the government approved a plan to develop Stansted in two phases, involving both airfield and terminal improvements that would increase the airport's capacity to 15 million passengers per year. Construction of the current terminal building began in 1986 and was completed in 1991.
Continental Airlines used to operate a transatlantic market between Stansted and Newark, New Jersey. Continental's flight was operated daily with a Boeing 757-200, until withdrawn for commercial reasons.
Tentative plans have been published for the addition of up to three more runways. If the Uttlesford district council approves the current plan, Stansted is to get a second parallel runway which should allow the airport to increase its capacity from 12 million in 2000 to 74 million air passengers in 2030.
Ground transportation
Stansted is connected to northeast London and Cambridge by the M11 motorway and by express electric trains to the London terminus of Liverpool Street station and, less frequently, by diesel trains to Cambridge and the Midlands. The access from the motorway has recently been improved with a new grade-separated junction.
Passengers hoping to use the long term car park should realise that it is about a mile from the terminal and should therefore allow at least twenty minutes to park and use a courtesy bus shuttle service prior to check-in. There are short term car parks next to the bus/coach station adjacent to the terminal and the rail terminus is at basement level beneath that terminal.
From Liverpool Street station in London the Stansted Express train leaves every 15 minutes and journey time is 45 minutes. However, as a result of the high fares (24 GBP or 36 EUR return), many passengers choose to take a scheduled coach from Stratford, Victoria Coach Station or Golders Green, costing half as much but taking rather longer.
Groups of 3-5 people may find a taxi is the cheapest way of getting there.
Terminal
Stansted International Airport has one terminal. The terminal building was designed by Foster Associates and features a "floating" roof, supported by a space frame of inverted-pyramid roof trusses. The base of each truss structure is a "utility pillar", which provides indirect uplighting illumination and is the location for air-conditioning and water, telecommunications, and electrical outlets. The layout of the airport is designed to provide an unobstructed flow for passengers to arrive at the short-stay car park, move through the check-in hall and on to the departure gates all on the same level. However, the airport has never catered for spectators or those wishing to watch friends depart.
The size of Stansted means that an aircraft can be isolated from the terminal and the usual parking stands. As such the airport is the designated destination for at-risk flights approaching London. On several occasions hijacked planes and planes carrying bomb threats have been diverted to land at Stansted. These incidents have all ended with no loss of life. Never-the-less the airport frequently practices handling major security alerts in conjunction with Essex police.
Airlines and destinations
Scheduled service
- Air Berlin (Berlin Tegel, Düsseldorf, Hanover, Nuremberg, Paderborn, Palma)
- Air Malta (Malta)
- Air Polonia (Bydgoszcz, Gdansk, Katowice, Poznan, Szczecin, Warsaw)
- CSA Czech Airlines (Prague)
- Cyprus Airways (Larnaca)
- Eastern Airways (Manchester)
- Easyjet (Alicante, Almeria, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Bari, Basel, Belfast, Bilbao, Bologna, Copenhagen, Edinburgh, Faro, Glasgow, Ljubljana, Lyon, Malaga, Munich, Naples, Newcastle, Nice, Palma, Prague, Tallinn, Valencia)
- El Al (Tel Aviv)
- Euromanx (Isle of Man)
- Germanwings (Cologne, Stuttgart)
- Iceland Express (Reykjavik)
- Kibris Turkish Airlines (Antalya, Izmir)
- Malev (Budapest)
- Norwegian.no (Bergen, Oslo, Trondheim)
- Ryanair (Aarhus, Alghero, Almeria, Altenburg, Ancona, Barcelona Gerona, Bergerac, Berlin Schoenefeld, Biarritz, Brescia, Brindisi, Carcassonne, Cork, Derry, Dublin, Eindhoven, Erfurt, Esbjerg, Forli, Fraknfurt Hahn, Friedrichshafn, Genoa, Glasgow Prestwick, Gothenburg Saev, Graz, Haugesund, Jerez, Karlsruhe, Kerry, Klagenfurt, Knock, Limoges, Linz, Lubeck, Malmo, Milan Bergamo, Montpellier, Munster, Murcia, Neiderrhein, Newquay, Nimes, Oporto, Oslo Torp, Palermo, Pau, Perpignan, Pescara, Pisa, Poitiers, Reus, Riga, Rochefort, Rodez, Rome Ciampino, Salzburg, Santander, Shannon, St Etienne, Stockholm Skavsta, Tampere, Tours, Trieste, Turin, Valencia, Valladolid, Venice Treviso, Zaragoza)
- Transavia (Rotterdam)
Charter operators
- 2wentys
- Air Adriatic
- Airways Holidays
- Alternative Travel
- Amathus
- Anemone Airlines
- Argo Airlines
- Atlantic Airways
- Aurigny Air Services
- Balkan Airlines
- Basiq Air
- Belleaire
- Celtic Holidays
- Channel Islands Travel
- Citalia
- Club 18-30
- Club Freestyle
- Cosmos Airlines
- Crystal Airlines
- CTA Holidays
- Cyplon
- Direct Holidays
- Eclipse Direct
- Escapades
- First Choice Airways
- Fly be
- Flying Finn
- Freedom Flights
- Golden Sun
- Goldtrail
- Greece & Cyprus Travel
- Holiday Options
- Holidays for Less
- Inghams
- Jersey Choice
- Kosmar
- Lewis's Travel
- Libra
- Luxair
- Magic of Italy
- Magic of Spain
- Manos Airlines
- Mark Warner
- Mastersun
- MyTravel
- Olympic Oddssey
- Open Holidays
- Panorama Airlines
- Portland Direct
- Savile Tours
- Simply Corsica
- Simply Ionian
- Simply Portugal
- Simply Spain
- Simply Tuscany
- SkyEurope
- Skytours
- Something Special
- Sovereign Airlines
- Style Holidays
- Sunquest
- Sunsail
- Sunset Airlines
- Sunspot Airlines
- Sunstart Airlines
- Tagney Tours
- Tarleton
- Thomas Cook Holidays
- Thomson
- Thomas L & M
- Unijet
- Villanza Airlines
External links
- Stansted Homepage (http://www.baa.co.uk/main/airports/stansted)
- The BBC on Stansted as designated "hijack airport" (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/633654.stm)