London Stansted Airport
Stansted Airport is an airport in the English county of Essex about fifty miles north of London. The Airport is owned and operated by BAA plc and its IATA airport code is STN. It was adapted from a WWII bomber base. It 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.
It is a medium-sized passenger airport with a single runway. Tentative plans have been published for the addition of up to three more runways. Stansted International Airport has one terminal. The terminal building was designed by Sir Norman Foster and features a "floating" roof, suspended by inverted-pyramid roof trusses. The base of each struss structure is a "utility pillar", which provides indirect illumination (by uplighting reflecting from the ceiling) and is the location for air-conditioning and water, telecommunications, and electrical outlets. Despite much design praise for its light and airy interior, the airport has never catered for spectators or those wishing to watch friends depart.
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.
Despite local opposition, 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. The size of Stansted means that an aircraft can be isolated from the terminal and the usual parking stands, and hijacked planes have consequently been redirected here on several occasions. These incidents have all ended with no loss of life.
Several budget airlines such as Ryanair and easyJet maintain bases there 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. 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.
The following airlines and tour companies market flights from Stansted:
