As we exited the luggage area, a BA CityFlyer E190 was coming in to its stand - and if you never seen the actitvity that goes on when a plane comes into land at this airport its an interesting sight.



Firstly Ground Crews, Ground Power and other departments are ready to handle the arrival



The inbound E-170 coming in



The plane is guided in the old fashioned way - two battons and brave person marshalling in the plane to the stand area.



As the plane comes in closer towards the terminal building, the plane must turn. Here, the marshal is directing the plane to turn right and come around.



The plane is turning still under the marshal's instructions.



The plane is now almost turned, with 90dregrees or so of turn to go.



The plane now turned, and set for its departure point and now "on stand" can now power down be chocked. The chocks now go on the forward gear.



With the first set of chocks going on, the ground team goes into action, docking steps and preparing to accept the passengers aboard the flight.



The second set of chocks go on, and the rest of the crews move in to service the aircraft on a tight turnaround. Soon enough this E-Jet will take to the skies again.



The rear set of steps is attached to allow faster unloading. The plane is now almost ready to unload its passengers.

When watching the operation, you know its got to be tight and quick to turn planes around quickly, and to see it in action is like an organised ballet - and gives an insight into the operations that are needed to turn around a plane at this airport.

The airport has had some interesting wins recently in terms of traffic, with Alitaila coming to London City. In addition, Estonian Air is a major win for London City (as the airline is switching from 737's and CRJ's to an E-190 platform). Route development is an important subject for an airport that operates 44 routes, and there is always scope to add more services - alas peak time services may be slightly problematic due to the lack of stands at peak hours.

Still, if the expansion goes ahead, this can only be good for this airport.