Short-haul heaven
Alistair Scott says go to Docklands for the best in stress-free travel 6 I did not fully understand the dread term terminal illness" until I saw Heathrow for myself' wrote Dennis Potter in 1978. Nearly 30 years later the illness is much more acute and there are yet more terminals at what is Europe's busiest airport.
Let me make my own historical position clear straight away. Living in Notting Hill for the past three decades, I've always been a Heathrow man at heart. The brilliant Boz of west London specialist Chauffeur Direct (020 8746 0099) scoops me up in his soothing silver Mercedes and in not much more than 30 minutes — and for rather less in pounds sterling — I'm at the door of my chosen terminal. So far, so good. But now it gets bad. Really bad.
In recent months the experience of progressing through one of BAAs Heathrow terminals to my designated aircraft, which was never exactly joyous, has become simply hellish. (For the sake of brevity, I shall simply blame Osama bin Laden and his soi-disant organisation for their insidious victory in making business and leisure travel through Heathrow increasingly unbearable.) Time-wasting cosmetic (in every sense) security and immigration controls (and their consequent queues) imposed in departure and arrival terminals that were simply not designed with space for them make for much misery, not to mention no time for a cheering pre-flight aperitif at the Caviar House Champagne Bar.
It is small wonder that Tony Douglas, Heathrow's chief executive, resigned in July, admitting that the airport was 'bursting at the seams' and in some places was 'held together by sticking plaster'. Nor is it surprising that the City minister, Kitty Ussher, admits to concerns about London losing business because foreign executives are prone to exclaim: 'Oh God, I don't want to go through Heathrow.' London's Mayor, Ken Livingstone, dismisses the whole Heathrow hassle as a 'shame on London' and calls the place a 'ghastly shopping mall'. Even London's own newspaper, the Evening Standard, has been actively inviting its readers to email it their tales of 'Heathrow Hell'.
But consider the alternatives. Gatwick and Stansted, BAAs other main 'London' airports, are much, much further in terms of miles and time from my base and scarcely more passenger-friendly when it comes to security queues and so on. Someone even suggested Southampton, which almost makes sense.
Then, towards the end of last year, I suddenly started to hear more and more good things about London City Airport. I had mistakenly always considered it a kind of 'joke' landing strip somewhere near the Dome in Docklands, not an area I customarily visit from one year to the next.
In recent months I have quickly discovered that not only does 'LCY' (as we new aficionados affectionately designate it) now serve a huge number of European destinations — though admittedly no long-haul ones — but that it is surprisingly easy to reach from many parts of London and its surrounding areas. (If you live in the south-east, get on the web and explore your own particular options.) From my own house it's actually under an hour away — minicab to Notting Hill Gate, Central Line to Bank and then the Docklands Light Railway to within yards of the normally queue-free check-in desks. Of course I regret having to exchange the smell of the Mercedes leather seats for that of crushed commuters, but the benefits more than outweigh this discomfort and, thanks partly to my recent discovery of the Oystercard, the journey costs much less than half the Heathrow chauffeur price.
After check-in, a single escalator, keenly guarded by benignlooking policemen casually toting their Heckler & Kochs, whisks you up to the departure level, where there is a decent enough bar/restaurant. The queue for security seldom lasts longer than three or four minutes and staff and passengers alike are pleasantly unstressed and, more to the point, polite to one another. (Interestingly, shoes are rarely required to be removed here.) Airside, there are a couple more bars and restaurants, a news agency-cum-bookshop, but otherwise mercifully few 'shopping opportunities'. The walk to the gate is blissfully short and sweet. The gates themselves are cramped holding-pens and you generally have to brave the elements to get to the aircraft, but these are very trivial hardships.
Over 30 destinations in the IJK and Europe are now served from LCY, most of them several times a day, with remarkable frequencies to, for example, Amsterdam (17 times return daily and the possibility of many intercontinental connections), Zurich (15 flights daily) and Edinburgh (14).
The most popular workhorse aircraft here is the four-engined BAe146 (aka Avro RJ) jet with around 100 seats, but do try to avoid seat rows seven to ten, which have very limited hand baggage space.
Air traffic delays are remarkably rare at LCY and when you fly back in, your hold baggage is typically delivered to the carousel within 15 minutes. Eat your heart out, hellish Heathrow.
'WM
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