London's "second" airport... not bad, could do better
Written: Jul 05 '04 (Updated Jul 05 '04)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Good serivec, ultra-fast baggage handling...
Cons: ... very slow passport control, not much choice of shops etc, confusing car parks
The Bottom Line: As airports go, it's okay - no more, no less.
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| captaind's Full Review: London Gatwick Airport |
It’s ironic that I lived for 25 years right next door to Heathrow Airport but have flown out of London Gatwick most of the time. Blame the vagaries of package holidays. My most recent holiday was also from LGW.
It’s not a bad little airport… hell, it’s not all that little, either! Having forever lived in the shadow of Heathrow, it seems to have accepted its role as London’s second airport, and rather than try to do the impossible and compete with Heathrow, it’s tried to improve what it has. To some extent it’s succeeded, but there are a lot of improvements that could still be made.
This trip was perhaps not the best one to judge Gatwick by – we arrived at in the wee hours of the morning for a 6:30am flight, and the place was understandably rather deserted. (It was great cruising up a virtually empty M25 – anyone who’s ever been on it will understand what a novelty that is on what is cruelly – but aptly –nicknamed “London’s biggest car park”…) Gatwick is well sign-posted from the motorways, but the long-term car parking can be very confusing. Thankfully there are regular shuttle buses from the car parks to the airport as it’s quite a distance away. (On the day we came back it was early afternoon – and the shuttle service seemed a little less regular!)
Nothing was open in the early hours of the morning (not very helpful to us, but hardly surprising). Some of the shops did open very early though, and by then even I was bored enough to have a look around. There’s not a great deal of choice but it’s not too back. The lounge is pretty good by airport standards – I’ve certainly seen a lot worse! There were just about enough coffee shops and the like to cater for the terminal, and the whole place was reasonably attractively designed. If you wanted something to do or look at… erm… take a book…
Transport links to Gatwick are okay but not as extensive as in Heathrow. The check-in staff were quiet friendly and efficient (the fact that my wife was travelling with her South African passport under her maiden name had caused us quite a bit of pre-holiday hassle, but never seemed to present much of a problem at the airport itself). Everything happened quickly and as it should – which, considering how much time we had to kill, was actually a shame! One of the few things there were plenty of were luggage trolleys, which considering the insanely long routes you often have to take to the departure lounges at Gatwick is a good thing.
When we came back, it took ages to get through passport control (apart from my wife, who was the only one going through the non-EU channel!), which negated the fact that the baggage handling was extremely fast. The was a decent number of various types of facilities throughout the airport, but in all honesty it would be helpful to have some more. The displays of arrivals and departures were frequently buggy (not that the information itself was incorrect – you just couldn’t read it!), so you had often had to rely to the speaker system – which was not perfect but you could just about understand the announcements most of the time. This didn’t really affect us but it could be a problem if your flight is affected and the display isn’t working, particularly if you’re deaf / hard of hearing or English isn’t your first language.
Overall
Gatwick isn’t a bad little airport, but there’s enough wrong with it for me to only give it 3 stars. I don’t much like airports anyway – far too much waiting around for my liking – and it’s not the worst I’ve been to (that dubious honour is probably shared by Munich in Germany), and definitely not the best (possibly Innsbruck in Austria), but it’s not too bad an experience. After all, as long as the flight goes off reasonably on time, the airport is the least important part of your holiday…
This was another entry to SpiderKid’s .
CaptainD’s Travel Writing
AUSTRIA
Kitzbühel
Salzburg
ENGLAND
London
Birmingham
York
London Heathrow Airport
FRANCE
Paris
Eiffel Tower
USA
Universal Studios Theme Park (Florida)
Florida
The Grand Canyon
Recommended:
Yes
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