Great Airport (London Stansted Airport (STN))

Member Name: DocDan3

Product:	London Stansted Airport (STN)
Date:	18/08/09 (38 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Large, Parking, Many Destinations, Large Departure Lounge + Many Shops/Restaurants, Security

Disadvantages: Long Walk To Some Gates

Stansted Airport is quite a large airport based in north east London. It's the second home of Ryanair - the low cost airline, with their main base being in Dublin, Ireland - hence they are an Irish airline. The airport has local 'pink elephant' parking, which we have used and it's pretty good. They also have more car parking nearer to the airport.

The check-in part is enormous and half of the large hall towards the front is for arrivals. The airport is one huge building, which forms one enormous hall and walls split each section but the roof is very high so it feels quite nice and spacious. There are check-in desks all over the place in parallel rows. They have many airlines flying from there including Ryanair, Easyjet, Air Berlin, Monarch, BMI and Thomson airways.

You have to make sure your liquids are all within a small bag that is available before you go through security. There are also weighing scales and desks to sort out luggage. You then enter security, which usually takes around 10 minutes and can be pretty busy. Once through, you are into the departures lounge and sometimes immediately given free samples for chocolates or drinks by nearby shops.

The departure lounge is very large and it has many shops and restaurants including WHSmith, Duty Free, Dixons, Boots and many more as well as an arcade. The departure lounge is quite large so never gets overly busy. The only problem with this airport is you have to walk so far to the gate! Sometimes it's a 20 minute walk from the departure lounge, which isn't great! Make sure you check your gate number as soon as it comes up to get there on time. It's a good airport though and has a large variety of shops with very good security too.

Thanks for reading,

Dan ©

Summary: A rather large airport with many destinations and a good departure lounge