Southampton Airport, the less stressful experience to flying! (Southampton Airport (SOU))

Member Name: wxcat

Product:	Southampton Airport (SOU)
Date:	30/08/09 (28 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good facilities, Quick check in, Not busy, Good staff

Disadvantages: Not huge amounts of destinations, Flybe aren't the cheapest

Southampton Airport is owned and run by BAA, the smallest of the BAA airports they run in the UK. Situated on the south coast, with great access from the M3/M27. As you get off Junction 5 of the M27, its a few minutes drive into the Airport. Its also a minutes walk from Southampton Airport Parkway rail station which is on the mainline between London Waterloo and Bournemouth.
If you want to get away from the larger airports and all the delays and long check in's its worth considering flying from Southampton.

They have a fairly new terminal thats large and spacious, with flights going both to UK and European destinations.
Airlines that fly from Southampton are Flybe and Eastern Airways among a few other smaller ones.
Destinations within the UK include Manchester, Leeds Bradford, Newcastle, Aberdeen, Inverness and Belfast. They fly to the islands around the UK, including Isle of Man, Isles of Scilly, Jersey and Guernsey.
Outside the Uk they fly to Dublin, Amsterdam, Alicante, Brussels, La Rochelle, Malaga, and Paris.

They have both short stay and long stay parking at the Airport, both car parks are past the airport terminal as you drive up to it. Long Stay is reasonable at £9.50 a day, you can turn up or book in advance online. Short stay is extortionate prices, and you're probably much better parking in the train station car park and walking the 2 minutes to the airport terminal. They do have a bus service going from the terminal to the long stay car park every few minutes. No surprising these days, theres no stopping near the terminal after the problems they have at other airports!

Inside the terminal they have a fair range of facilities, theres a bar/restaurant, WH Smiths, Costa Coffee and World Duty Free. They have all the good facilities including toilets, payphones, and a cashpoint.
There is a hotel back up on the entrance road to the airport, a Premier Inn if you need to stay over before/after your flight.

There are plenty of BAA staff about in the terminal and always polite and helpful when needed. Theres never any huge queues in the airport whenever I've been there and that is the big pull of using Southampton instead of Gatwick/Heathrow.

Summary: Great modern airport to save the stresses of flying from Heathrow and Gatwick