Latest News

Bus services connecting Stansted Airport to Colchester, Braintree, and Bishop’s Stortford will be “further boosted” on July 3 2011, according to the Essex hub’s website. The affected routes are operated by transport company Tellings Golden Miller (TGM)

TGM plans to abandon the existing X22 service to Colchester and Braintree in favour of a new bus route, the 133. Presently, the X22 operates every two hours, 24hrs a day. The 133 will retain its predecessor’s round-the-clock schedule, but operates every 60 minutes instead. TGM’s Excel 308 service from Stansted to Bishop’s Stortford will be altered to operate on a 24hr schedule, including on Sundays. The service will otherwise remain unchanged.

Stansted Airport referred to the partnership between the hub and local bus companies as “a real success story”.

Bob Dorr, chief at TGM, hopes that the altered bus timetables will encourage people who traditionally drive to the airport to leave their cars at home. Mr. Dorr noted that TGM and Stansted had worked “very hard” to maintain efficient transport links in the Colchester area. “We are delighted to have such a progressive partner in Stansted Airport.”

Airport chiefs claim that investment in the local community, to the tune of 31p from the sale of every car parking space, was responsible for the improved bus services. The extent of that investment is perhaps best represented by the volume of passengers that travel to Stansted via public transport – 50%, allegedly, the highest ratio of airport bus users to car users in the UK.

TGM’s X22 service calls at Colchester Bus Station and Essex University, among other destinations. The Excel 308 visits Heath Row (not to be confused with Heathrow Airport), Thorley and Bishop’s Park, and the centre of Bishop’s Stortford. More information on public transport serving Stansted Airport can be found on the hub’s official website.

Over the centuries, artists have used all sorts of materials in their compositions, from charcoal and paint, to acrylics and oils. However, a recent drugs bust at Stansted Airport suggests that a few Columbian painters have taken impressionism to new extremes, by painting with Class A drugs.

“The smugglers had covered the canvases with a layer of cocaine, and then literally painted over the drugs”, explained Sarah Wolstenholme, assistant director of the Stansted branch of the UK Border Agency. Ms. Wolstenholme noted that “the smell” coming from the package had given away the ruse, indicating that the paintings were “more than they seemed”.

Officials say that the extremely crude paintings would have had a street value of £10,000 if they had ever reached their destination, in Southwest London. The five abstract pictures contained, amongst other ingredients, 200g of cocaine, a quantity referred to as “relatively small” by the UK Border Agency.

Stansted Airport has become a preferred point of entry for people smuggling strange goods into the UK. On May 8, a 54-year-old woman was found to be carrying 15 tortoises in a lettuce-filled box. The amphibians, known as ‘spur-thighed’ tortoises, are classified as ‘vulnerable’ on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, but enjoy some popularity as (very expensive) garden pets. Their importation is, however, illegal without the correct paperwork.

Malcolm Bragg, assistant director of investigations at the UK Border Agency, said that the smuggling of animals was a “contributory factor” to the extinction of species, especially as many creatures do not survive their ordeal, or become seriously ill during transportation. The fifteen tortoises found at Stansted, for example, were found to be underweight and covered in tics.

Stansted’s captured paintings, marked as ‘shirts and paints’ in cargo dossiers, were discovered on a flight from South America in April this year. The smugglers had valued the shipment at $1, in a bid to evade the attentions of border officials.

Stansted, the third largest airport in the UK, is also the best low-cost hub in the world. The Essex airport was nominated top of its category at the 2011 World Airport Awards in Copenhagen, Denmark, shrugging off competition from Brussels Charleroi Airport in Belgium, and London Luton Airport in the UK.

The World Airport Awards, now in its twelfth year, measure customer satisfaction levels at more than 240 global hubs. The process is “totally free of any commercial influence or bias”, according to organiser, Skytrax, and awards are allocated based upon the opinions of 11.38m travellers. Nominees must excel in 39 aspects of airport business, from customer service, to the provision of a safe ‘experience’ for passengers.

Stansted, which is home to Ryanair, easyJet, and bmibaby, among others, featured in the rankings of last year’s World Airport Awards as well, achieving third place in the low-cost airport category, behind Berlin’s Schönefeld Airport in first position and, once again, Charleroi Airport in second.

Nick Barton, Stansted’s managing director, said that the airport was “extremely proud” to be home to a “new breed” of budget carriers, such as AirAsia X. “It’s thanks to the help and support of our excellent airline partners that we have gained this global honour and recognition”, Mr. Barton explained in an official press release.

In related news, Stansted Airport has also been handed an Air Cargo Award of Excellence. The accolade, which is voted for by airlines, rather than passengers, recognises efforts to improve the quality of freight services. Stansted’s run of good luck stands in stark contrast to the fortunes of local rivals, Heathrow and Gatwick, which have both been criticised in the media in recent weeks.

Stansted Airport’s main terminal has been standing for more than two decades, according to officials at the Essex-based hub.

Completed in 1991, and opened by the Queen just four days later, the hub’s main building is commonly referred to as the Lord Foster Terminal, after its 75-year-old designer, Norman Foster. Lord Foster is a famous British architect, known for his work on Wembley Stadium, the headquarters of HSBC in Hong Kong, and the Reichstag in Germany. Many of Lord Foster’s designs are modern structures, containing cubic shapes forged from glass and steel.

Stansted Airport, which handles around 18m travellers per year, is a fine example of Lord Foster’s design ethos. The terminal building is a gigantic glass cube, supported by ‘nests’ of metal posts. The airy structure, seated on 500,000sq ft of Essex countryside, stands level with the tops of the trees in Hatfield Forest, a design feature that required the destruction of a hillside in 1981. Unfortunately, whilst the hub’s rather violent intrusion into the green fields of southeastern England has left few obvious scars on the landscape, the local villages of Chickney and Stansted Mountfitchet remain plagued by noise and air pollution, and a rapidly souring housing market.

Nick Barton, director at Stansted, said that the airport’s 1,300 staff members were “extremely proud” that the Lord Foster-designed terminal is “still as good today as it was when Her Majesty the Queen opened it twenty years ago”. Surprisingly, many of the baggage handlers and security guards that celebrated the terminal’s twentieth year on earth were present for the Queen’s visit in the early nineties. Trevor Waldock, a former security guard at Stansted, recalled how equipment was moved from the old terminal into the Lord Foster building “overnight”, by carrying it across the runway. Mr. Waldock referred to the transfer as “symbolic”.

Speaking to the BBC News website, Spencer de Grey, head at Foster and Partners, said that the firm did not want to emulate the “expensive” and inefficient design of Heathrow and Gatwick airports, when first presented with the task of creating a new terminal at Stansted. “We literally turned upside down the traditional terminal”, Mr. de Grey said, in reference to Stansted’s twenty-year-old building.

Manchester Airports Group (MAG) has expressed a desire to buy one of the two airports being sold by the British Airports Authority (BAA). The BAA has been told that it must sell Stansted, and one of either Glasgow or Edinburgh airports, after the Competition Commission found that the firm’s monopoly on UK aviation was detrimental to competition in the industry. Charlie Cornish, chief executive at MAG, said that the operator would “definitely have a look” at any future sale, if the airports could “deliver value for shareholders”.

At present, MAG’s four airports in the UK handle a combined 22.8m passengers a year, according to Civil Aviation Authority figures for 2010, compared to 104m at the BAA’s six hubs. If the BAA was forced to sell Stansted and Glasgow (for example), the aviation firm’s hold on UK aviation would slip to 79m travellers per year. The purchase of Stansted by MAG would add 18.6m passengers to the operator’s annual figures, creating a hypothetical, end-of-year figure of 41.4m travellers. The market place would even out, but the BAA would retain the largest share of the aviation cake.

It is extremely unlikely that the BAA will ever be dethroned, as Heathrow Airport adds 66m travellers a year (and a host of freight movements) to the operator’s annual tally. Further strengthening the BAA’s position is the low chance that Stansted and one of the two Scottish Airports will be sold to the same company. If MAG was to buy Stansted and Glasgow, for example, the firm would control four ‘top twelve’ airports, compared to the BAA’s two, a figure that is likely to upset the Competition Commission.

MAG previously tried to purchase Gatwick from the BAA in 2009, but was unable to acquire sufficient funding. However, the company was instrumental, albeit unintentionally, in a minor BAA victory over the Competition Commission in 2009, which placed the sale of Stansted and one of the two Scottish airports on temporary hold. The BAA complained to the Competition Appeals Tribunal of “apparent bias” in the sale of Gatwick Airport to Global Infrastructure Partners, after it was discovered that Peter Moizer, a man with an interest in MAG, was on the panel that originally forced the BAA to sell up.

A date for the sale of Stansted, and Edinburgh or Glasgow airport, has not yet been set. The Competition Commission is currently considering the BAA’s claims that the aviation industry has changed sufficiently since the original sale order to warrant a review of the entire case. The plea is based around the current government’s refusal to consider any airport expansions in the southeast, a move that severely limits the BAA’s ability to expand its business.

MAG currently owns Humberside, Bournemouth, East Midlands, and its namesake, Manchester Airport. The BAA has six airports in its portfolio, namely, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Southampton, Stansted, and Heathrow.

Blue and yellow airline, Ryanair, will begin flying from Stansted Airport to Rhodes in the Aegean Sea from April 2011. The route is part of a Europe-wide expansion of services into the Greek market, which will see flights to Thessaloniki, Kos, or Rhodes added at 11 continental airports and 2 UK hubs.

Rhodes, together with Lesbos, Crete, and Corfu, is one of more than 6,000 Greek islands in the Mediterranean and Aegean seas. The destination has a temperate climate, similar to mainland Greece, making it a haven for sun-seekers. Rhodes is perhaps best known for its archaeology, however. The island is the former home of the Colossus, a massive statue that guarded the seaward entrance to Rhodes’ Mandraki Harbour, and the present location of many ancient ruins, including the Acropolis of Rhodes.

As the island depends on tourism, Ryanair’s new routes from Bologna in Italy, Bremen in Germany, and Stansted Airport, among others, will no doubt be a boon for Rhodes’ economy, and for the Greek region overall. The airline claims that its routes to Greece, numbering 30, will inject €350m (£296m) into the local economy. Stephen McNamara, head of communications at Ryanair, said that the airline was “delighted to boost tourism” in southeast Europe, noting that the Irish carrier has also added routes to Lithuania in recent weeks.

The flight from Stansted to Rhodes will depart the Essex hub three times a week, on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Tickets, available since the beginning of February, begin at £37.99 for a one-way journey. Ryanair estimates that 700,000 people will travel on its Greek routes during 2011/12.

The Aviation Environment Federation (AEF), a UK-based pressure group, has a repository of articles on its website, detailing the deleterious effect of modern aviation on human health. The fumes produced from aircraft, the AEF notes, are responsible for an increased risk of “deadly” blood clots, an exponential increase in strokes in women, and the erosion of lung function in young children.

People living in central London are especially at risk, according to the Environmental Audit Committee. Greenwich, Lewisham, and Hammersmith have levels of nitrogen dioxide that contravene European Union regulations on air pollution, whilst the City of London itself has more poisonous gases than the planet Venus. Whether the statistics are exaggerated is debatable, but it would be difficult to argue that aviation on all scales has at least some effect on the environment.

Jet fuel, much like petrol and coal, is high up on the list of eco-unfriendly substances, producing an estimated 3.5% of measurable climate change. Fortunately, Stansted Airport, in an effort to curb runaway emissions, and improve the reputation of the aviation industry, is to begin trials of a “pioneering” fuel that could “drive down emissions and power airport vehicles of the future.” Together with energy firm, ITM Power, the Essex hub will use two purpose-built Ford Transit vans to test ‘HFuel’, a hydrogen-based alternative to conventional jet fuel.

Over the course of a week beginning March 7 2011, the two vehicles will be absorbed into Stansted’s regular fleet, and perform regular airport duties. The vans’ performance will then be analysed by ITM Power to discern the “potential and development” of the fuel, and its viability for larger vehicles, such as aeroplanes and trucks. ITM Power’s chief executive, Dr Graham Cooley, noted that airports were “perfect locations” for HFuel tests.

Stansted will be the first UK business to receive its HFuel vans, but ITM claims that a further 19 companies will soon be involved in the trial.

bmibaby, possibly the only carrier in the world to have a strange alien infant as a mascot, is to begin running flights from Stansted International to Belfast City Airport in Ireland.

The airline will operate the route three times a day during the week, and once on a Sunday. bmibaby claims that it will become the only carrier to travel between the two destinations when the route goes live on March 28 2011.

Perhaps even more exciting, for explorers of far-flung lands at least, is the news that Albanian airline Belle Air has introduced a twice-weekly flight from Stansted to Tirana, the capital of Albania. The service, announced by “forward thinking” newspaper Cambridge First, is one of just two direct flights to Tirana available from the UK.

Speaking about the new Belfast City route, bmibaby's director, Julian Carr, said that the flight was “ideal” for any customer, business or leisure, who wishes to travel between Ireland and London. bmibaby's parent company, premium airline bmi, noted that the new Belfast-Stansted route would “complement” an existing flight from the Irish city to Heathrow Airport.

Belfast City is rapidly becoming the airport of choice for major airlines in Ireland. Manx2, an airline based at Ballasalla on the Isle of Man, and bmibaby have both jumped ship in recent months, moving their planes from Belfast International to Belfast City, a development that has angered Exeter-based carrier Flybe. The white-and-blue airline was previously the dominant airline at City.

Tickets for Belfast-Stansted cost from £23.99, one-way, whereas Belle Air’s route to Albania comes in at around €280 (£233) for a return ticket in economy class departing on 1 April 2011 and returning on the following Monday. Eager visitors can book flights to and from the Albanian city on the Belle Air website.

On November 24, industrial action by millions of Portuguese workers resulted in the cancellation of more than 60 Ryanair flights from a number of UK airports, including Stansted, Glasgow, and Liverpool. The strike, dubbed the biggest in the country’s history by Portugal News, was in protest at government plans to cut wages, as fears of an Ireland-style financial collapse spread throughout southwestern Europe.

Portugal, much like Spain and France, is one of the most popular holiday destinations for UK travellers. The country has warm temperatures, and a history of conquest and exploration that rivals that of neighbouring country, Spain, whose conquistadors put the Incan Empire to the sword over 450 years ago.

Ryanair and Irish rival, Aer Lingus, pulled the plug on flights to Lisbon, Porto, and Faro as Portuguese air traffic controllers joined last week’s strike. Newspapers report that train stations, ferry terminals, airports, and most other forms of public transport were derailed completely or manned by skeleton crews for the duration of the walkout.

The strike, which lasted 24 hours, is rumoured to have cost the country upwards of €500m (£420m), a debt that is likely to guarantee a Portuguese bid for huge loans from the EU, similar to the requests handed in by Greece and Ireland this year.

Ryanair was unimpressed, saying “we have cancelled more than 2,000 flights and delayed more than 12,000 (in 2010), causing disruption to more than 2.5 million passengers.” The airline referred to similar industrial action in Spain, Belgium, and France, and cited wide scale disruption to global air traffic as a reason to revoke air traffic controllers’ right to strike.

However, Portugal News suggests that Ryanair has taken out its frustration on its passengers rather than foreign unions, offering “no help whatsoever” to UK passengers stranded in Porto and Lisbon airports. Travellers have even had to pay for replacement flights, in an event that mirrors this year’s Volcanic Ash Crisis for levels of chaos and uncertainty.

Essex homeowners who sold their houses to the British Airports Authority (BAA) at the end of last year want the opportunity to buy them back.

The properties were sold to the aviation giant under the assumption that they would be demolished if plans to expand Stansted Airport ever came to fruition. However, as the expansion of all London airports was scrapped as part of the Conservatives’ election manifesto, the BAA-owned homes no longer face being destroyed to make way for an extra terminal or runway. This means, say ex-residents, that the homes should be returned to the property market and sold.

BAA officials began moonlighting as estate agents in October 2009, and bought more than 300 homes near Stansted and Heathrow airports, paying up to three times the market price in some instances. Since the bottom fell out of the campaign in July, shortly after David Cameron was elected as Prime Minister, the BAA’s houses have been rented to short-term tenants or, even worse, left empty.

Ex-resident, Maggie Sutton, is unhappy that her family was forced to leave a home that they "loved." She has pleaded with the BAA, albeit through a BBC TV programme, to “rebuild the community.” “It is heartbreaking to live the way we’ve lived for the last eight years," Maggie explained.

BAA bosses are “reviewing how to dispose of the properties,” according to the BBC News website, but the aviation firm claims that it has not yet been approached by anybody wanting to re-purchase their home in the Stansted area.

Peter Sanders, chairman of the Stop Stansted Expansion (SSE) pressure group, said that the local community has been “destroyed.” SSE is petitioning the government to place a 50-year block on expansions at Stansted Airport, regardless of who owns the Essex hub, or which political party happens to be in power at the time.