PUCCI GALORE

Sugar - It was only as a contrast with Southend and Pitsea. Thaxted is far more pleasant - you are quite right.

kanderson1965

Madame, will you please refrain from using the fine town of (H)arlow as a pseudonym for the tin shed that is STN.
I used to live in said town and the only way I could culturally improve myself was to move to the even finer city of Kingston-Upon-Hull.

LadyB

As said, if we have a flight leaving around 10am ish, yes we do as we would rather be 10 mins drive away from the airport than get up at 6am and risk being caught up in serious traffic problems and be either cutting it terribly fine or worse, missing our flight.

We have done both LHR & LGW in around an hour, maybe an hour 10/15 mins at all times of the day, however as others have mentioned, at certain times or if there are roadworks or an accident, it can be 3 hours.

�100 to stay overnight & leave the car at LGW for 10/11 nights is worth paying for not having a stressful drive on the morning of our flight; makes the start of our holiday all the more relaxed.

To add: Thaxted is really lovely, apart from it being under the flight path of STN and Finchingfield is where I used to take my girlies to feed the ducks when they were little, it's a beautiful village.

xmassheep

Congratulations on escaping! I often breathe a sigh of relief that London shows as my place of birth on my passport whereas my sister will forever have Harlow inscribed in hers. Unfortunately I was born in the same hospital as David Beckham, and when he moved to the village I grew up in I was concerned that he was following me. He seems to have stopped now!

LadyB - yes, both are lovely places and well worth a visit. In fact, the STN flightpath is the only blight on a whole host of lovely villages in the surrounding area. I think Uttlesford was recently voted one of the top 10 most pleasant places in the country to live, or something along those lines.

And the STN flightpath can have some benefits - when the current terminal was built my primary school got a wodge of cash for painting guide marks on the playground. And at secondary school we would get extra time in language exams if a plane flew over (pretty much guaranteed).

LadyB

OT I know but my no.3 girly should have been born in PAH in Harlow, however, a week before my due date, we went to a Xmas 'do' in London; theatre/overnight stay and 90 minutes after calling an ambulance to our hotel, she was born at St. Thomas's hospital, so she has London as her place of birth on her passport

xmassheep

I hope she is suitably grateful! ^

gerard747

BA and STN are sayings this is the first time BA has flown from STN
but Im sure they used to fly STN/Manchester years ago,
can anyone remember this service?

Globaliser

Welcome to FT, gerard747!

There was some discussion here about which routes BA used to fly from STN: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/briti...k-gla-stn.html

corporate-wage-slave

Welcome to Flyertalk gerard747, and welcome in particular to the BA forum. It's good to see you here, it's only thanks to the contributions made by you and others that makes this site of any value. Welcome on board.

Yes I remember the service, not well, but I've done a few MAN-STNs and back on BA. I remember the aircraft were small (1-11s? Avros?) and that there were bus transfers at the STN end, but it's a bit woozy now. I more remember the painful rail service to London before the advent of full SEx.

flatlander

Cambridge hasn't got much of a catchment area for premium leisure. It may be expensive to live here but most people aren't that well off, there's a tech and pharma population but it's not that big. The countryside areas near Cambridge are not nearly as well off nor as densely populated as south of London. LGW makes much more sense than STN for BA.

For IAG, Vueling from STN makes more sense - and often a Vueling route causes the airport to appear in the list of BA website airports because you can book it via BA either as Vueling or as a BA codeshare.

STN itself is a horrible airport since MAG took over. It wasn't great before and now it's very unpleasant. Between the much higher population density, wealth density, and better airport at LGW I can't see why BA should come to STN.

Of course I'd love it if they flew STN-AMS, but they would never displace enough traffic from the Orange Mob to make it work.

corporate-wage-slave

The other relevant thread here is:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/briti...o-ibz-pmi.html

Nimrod1965

Deleted

GK1981

I always have pleasant memories of Stansted in the mid 90s, when I would travel down from GLA/PIK to visit family in Essex. The airport was always peaceful, quiet and felt like it had so much space. It's a very different place now!

LadyB

Here we are 3 years on from this thread being started and BA are flying in/out of STN.

We're going to FAO in September and looked at flying out of STN but 05:40? No thanks, even though we're only 20 minutes drive away, that's either a very early alarm call or not bothering to go bed the night before! We booked our outbound from LCY, that's about 25 minutes in the opposite direction for a noon departure, perfect, however we have booked our return into STN, which means quite an early start from our accommodation in Portugal but a perfectly acceptable arrival time back to STN.
Oh and the flights were cheaper in CE than in Y!