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London is served by three main airports, Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted, and by a fourth, City, designed largely for business travellers’ use with daily flights to European destinations including Paris, Amsterdam and Brussels.  Heathrow tends to serve the scheduled international and domestic market and although Gatwick and Stansted deal mainly with holiday charter and domestic flights they are increasingly offering a large selection of scheduled flights mainly from the low cost operators.

Heathrow

Heathrow is the major London airport with four terminals serving most parts of the world.  It is situated 15 miles west of London along the M4 motorway.  The Piccadilly Line of the London Underground serves Heathrow Airport with the journey taking about 40 minutes from central London. There are two stations at the airport itself, one for Terminal 4 and the other serving the remaining three terminals.  Alternatively there is a fast rail service from London’s Paddington Station. Trains leave approximately every 15 minutes. The Airbus is a bus service from Victoria Coach Station to Heathrow Airport.  The services run about every 30 minutes.

Terminal 1 at Heathrow is used mainly for domestic flights and a few European short hauls.  Terminal 4 is used for British Airways intercontinental flights including Concorde and for several European destinations.  Terminals 2 and 3, serving European and intercontinental flights of carriers other than BA, are extremely busy and can become very congested.  Terminals 1, 2 and 3 are connected to each other by moving walkways but transfer from Terminal 4 is either by the regular free inter-terminal buses or by the Underground.  The fifth terminal at Heathrow, known as T5, is currently under construction with a completion date of May 2010. It will allow the airport to cater for anticipated increases in passenger numbers bringing it total capacity to around 80-85 million passengers a year. Facilities at Heathrow are those expected of a major international airport including shops, restaurants, office and secretarial facilities and banks.

Gatwick

Gatwick is situated about 28 miles south of London along the M23 motorway.  It is particularly well known for its use as a holiday charter airport affecting how busy it becomes during weekends in the summer season.  Trains between Victoria station and Gatwick airport leave every 15 minutes, the journey taking about half an hour.  National Express coaches run hourly between Victoria and Gatwick and this journey takes about one hour.

There is a Jetlink bus service for those wishing to transfer between Heathrow and Gatwick.

Stansted

Stansted Airport has a large, airy and pleasant terminal building, though over the past few years it has undergone a large surge in passenger numbers as a result of being the preferred London base for the low cost airlines.  It is situated about 25 miles to the north east of London, easily reached from junction 8 of the M11, and via the Stansted Express rail service to and from Liverpool Street station which takes around 40 minutes.  It serves a wide range of scheduled domestic and international departures plus charter holiday traffic.

City Airport

There is usually just a 20 minute check in at London City Airport, which is designed mainly for the business traveller. A number of carriers operate services to a good selection of European destinations including Luxembourg, Antwerp, Rotterdam, Brussels, Belfast, Dublin, Edinburgh, Dundee, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Frankfurt, Dusseldorf, Lugano, Geneva, Basle, Bern, Zurich, Paris, Rennes, Le Havre and Bordeaux. Located at the Royal Docks six miles east of the City and eight miles from the West End, facilities here include car parking and rental, bureau de change, London City Brasserie restaurant, various shops and taxis. There are frequent shuttle bus services linking the Airport to Canary Wharf and Liverpool Street Station, the former journey taking about twelve minutes, the latter about thirty minutes. Other routes to the airport are the Docklands Highway or the North London Line (Silvertown & London City Airport station is 300 yards from the airport terminal). The airport also has good dual carriageway connections to the A406 North Circular Road which links directly to the A13, M11 and M25. Access from the south is via the Blackwall Tunnel, some three miles from the terminal or via the Woolwich ferry.

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