There’s a saying – the kind seen on ‘inspirational’ posters on the walls of HR departments – that claims: ‘It’s about the journey, not the destination.’ Clearly it was dreamed up by someone who has never flown from Stansted and found themselves jostling through crowds of stag and hen parties, newly arrived Polish workers (there’s even been an Essex-based Polish taxi service to pick them up) and the hordes descending on Burger King as soon as they come through arrivals like John Mills and co. supping their first lagers after trekking through the desert in Ice Cold In Alex.
It’s not just Stansted, of course. Gatwick – or ‘Chavwick’, as I’ve heard it called – is just as bad. Rare forays to Luton are like driving on to a permanent building site, and friends who work as cabin crew on a well-known holiday airline tell me the one flight they pray they don’t get given is the late Saturday night Glasgow-to-Ibiza boozefest. I have a female friend who cannot get on a plane without three large glasses of rosé from the airport Wetherspoons – these pubs are packed from 5 a.m. as if everyone has just come off a night shift at Smithfield meat market.
But away from the hour-long process of checking in and putting your tiny toiletries in plastic bags, there are airports where such things are a comparative doddle and that should be celebrated. From Norwich to Newquay, these are beacons of relative tranquillity – even for Ryanair and easyJet flights – where you can park close to the airport without having to max out your credit card, sail through to departures, easily find a seat in the sole restaurant or coffee shop and wait quietly with no one other than those on your flight until it’s time to board.
Coming back again, once the plane lands you’re at your car within minutes rather than hours. Sure, there are only a limited number of routes available from such airports – but some can still provide a quick trip to Paris, Amsterdam or other European hub for those willing to transfer to a long-haul destination. An hour’s wait to transfer has to be better than that inevitable extra hour stuck on the motorway turn-off to Heathrow.
Over the years, whether for work or pleasure, I’ve flown to and from Southampton, Southend, Leeds/Bradford, Glasgow, Newcastle, Aberdeen and one or two others. And though they may lack the expensive high-end fashion houses, champagne bars or a Gordon Ramsay restaurant, they also lack an overabundance of hen and stag parties or golfing societies who have been drinking since 5 a.m. If there is a group of women dressed as cowgirls and wearing sashes with ‘Getting married’, they tend to be quieter simply because the airport itself is quieter. And, get this, the staff smile.
My nearest airport is Norwich, an hour’s drive from home and a joy to breeze in and out of. I flew from there to Alicante recently on a flight mercifully free of gangs of Benidorm boozers. Yes, you have to be able to go out and return on certain days of the week, but if that is manageable then the chances of arriving at your destination less frazzled are significantly increased.
You can park close to the airport without having to max out your credit card, sail through to departures, easily find a seat in the sole restaurant and wait quietly with no one other than those on your flight
Many of these regional airports have just five to ten flights a day, which makes it easier for those flying out, flying in or merely waiting for friends or family to arrive. But it’s a precarious existence. It just needs one small airline to go bust to put the whole site in financial trouble. Exeter used to be a hub for now defunct Flybe, and Humberside’s website is currently displaying a notice that Eastern Airways has gone into administration.
Then there are those airports that rely on the big boys of cheap flights, such as Ryanair and easyJet, who can easily pull out if it proves uneconomical. Some have a downer on these airlines, particularly Ryanair, but I’ve no problem with a company that does what it says on the tin. It’s cheap and almost cheerful, generally arrives on time and that annoying habit of clapping when a plane lands seems to have disappeared if recent experience is anything to go by. It’s even better if you go from a smaller airport where the pre-flight routines are quicker. Just book early and be prepared to travel light.
I have relatives who work as cabin crew at the cheaper end of the travel market. They say they rarely encounter problems with passengers from smaller airports – it’s the bigger ones where they get the drunken or brawling passengers that force the plane to divert to, say, Madeira where the offenders get chucked off and told to make their own way home.
Some of the smallest airports can be quirky and very specialised, particularly those on the Scottish islands where the ‘terminal’ is a tin hut. But then I can remember Stansted having little more than that when I went to Malgrat de Mar on a package holiday with the family in 1970, before the ‘new’ terminal opened. Now, the arrivals board shows planes arriving every minute or two, the concourses are packed and it costs £7 to drop someone off and a small mortgage if you have to wait to pick them up again.
This is not to say that every small airport is a diamond. A friend told me their plane had to circle round the Isle of Man for ages because the air traffic controller had gone for a cup of tea. Scottish island airports can be little more than a field with a hut, provided the weather hasn’t kiboshed the flight in the first place – and if it’s late and the baggage handler has gone home then you have to come back the next day to pick up your luggage.
Sadly, some are barely surviving, relying on cargo and mail services to keep the runways open and waiting for a white-knight carrier to discover that there is an alternative to big, overcrowded airports in so many parts of the country. So next time you’re booking a flight, it’s worth looking beyond the obvious airports to see what you can find – after all, it’s about the journey, not the destination.
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