This year, you voted London City as your favourite airport in the UK for the first time – but how did this little terminal get so big? Rick Jordan touches down
7 October 2022
Back in June 2020, residents of Newham in East London heard a sound that had been eerily absent for the previous three months: the noise of aircraft engines in the air. Like many other places during that initial lockdown, London City Airport had closed its doors and runways – for the first time since it began operating in 1987.
As it’s often celebrated, London City is the only airport in London proper (take that Luton and Southend!) and the first to have been built in Britain in the postwar years. When it opened, ‘Pump Up the Volume’ and George Michael’s ‘Faith’ were in the charts, Margaret Thatcher was at Number 10 and London was booming. The once forgotten Docklands, drifting into dereliction – its urban wasteland famously used in scenes from Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, also released in 1987 – became the future of London. Onwards, upwards: here was the yuppie airport, the terminal of crocodile-print leather Filofaxes and brick-sized mobile phones. It was built on the site of King George V Dock, where heavyweight merchant ships had moored and set sail from in the first half of the 20th century; a charming correlation – perhaps one day airships and helium aircraft will silently rise up from here.
However, there are those who consider Heathrow the only airport worth considering – those Terminal 5 enthusiasts who’d get a nosebleed if they ever strayed up to Stansted. I have to declare a personal interest in Heathrow, the once-upon-a-time London Airport, as my grandfather was in charge of security there in the early 1960s; a former Special Branch officer who left behind autograph books filled with signatures of passing passengers – Gregory Peck, Olivia de Havilland, Winston Churchill, and Anthony Eden.
I’ve never seen anyone famous at London City, but then, I’ve never really stayed around long enough to spot them. That’s the point of this quaint airport: short queues, quick turnarounds, then off home or onto the DLR. No longer just the preserve of business travellers, it has been adding holiday routes over the years – to the Greek islands, Ibiza, and even Shetland, which seems just the little destination a boutique airport should be serving. London City is the sort of friendly, neighbourhood airport that, were circumstances a little different, would chalk up destinations on a blackboard to be perused while passing – then a few short hours later, sipping wine in Faro or Amsterdam.
Moreover, like most airports, it doesn’t want to sit still – following its Wifi upgrade (super-fast and free to all), its departure lounge is about to be enhanced with more seating, dining, and shops such as Creed and Aesop arriving. I hope it doesn’t turn into the once-tranquil Stansted, with its winding pathways around endless concessions, nor is allowed to expand further with more passengers. Consequently, staying small and nimble could be the key to its continued charm and efficiency.
