317 forever
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Heathrow could therefore be renamed London East Slough Airport
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Are Stansted, Gatwick etc. "London airports"?
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AlastairFraser
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And Gatwick be renamed London Crawley!!Heathrow could therefore be renamed London East Slough Airport
There was a proposal ten or twenty years ago - when there was all the discussion about where London's new airport (or great expansion of one) should be - for a new 'London Oxford' airport (LOX!) south west of Oxford. See http://www.pleiade.org/lox_preface.html - not sure if it ever got any further than a website...
And of course there is a London Airport 'LON' (or London International) - for what I have seen described as 'fake' London (even if it is on the Thames), in Ontario, Canada
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frodshamfella
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on London Ashford ( Lydd )So, no London Oxford, then?
Dr_Paul
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Coventry is going just too far even for those who want a 'London' prefix. I guess that if one really wanted to wind up some folk from Coventry, one could suggest that it be called 'Birmingham Baginton'.My own opinion:
Heathrow: Yes
Gatwick: Yes
Luton: Yes
City: Yes
Stansted: Yes
Cambridge: No way
Ashford: Closer to France than London
Oxford: No just no
Southend: No
Coventry
Verulamius
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What about London VIP Airport - RAF Northolt?
Or for the wannabee VIP, Biggin Hill (BQH)...
AlastairFraser
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Birmingham East Airport
The internationally recognised standard for location of an airport in relation to its city centre is 50km. Only City (0km), Heathrow (25km), Biggin Hill (29km) and Gatwick (45km) Airports fall into this category. Luton (54km), Stansted (63km), Southend (67km) & Oxford (95) Airports are outside the standard. But then transport accessibility is also a factor. Using the quickest transport methods, Gatwick and Luton are 30 mins from London. Stansted is 47 mins. Oxford, Biggin Hill, and Southend are 55 mins. Heathrow a short 14 mins, before the advent of fast trains direct from Paddington it was 35 mins by taxi, 55mins by Piccadilly Line. This is why I prefer using Eurostar when travelling to/from Europe, less hassle getting to and from airports, both ends.
miklcct
On Moderation
City, Heathrow, Biggin Hill are in London boundary. The others aren't.
AlterEgo
Veteran Member
Where are you getting this from?
Do you have a source for this?
Not that I would dispute it as a normal 'standard of expectation' these days.
And my feeling is that over the years - perhaps since WW2 period is that the 'standard of expectation' has increased over the years - in the 1940s the c25km of Heathrow (and other proposals of the time) was 'normal'; but these days (2020s) approaching 100km is not out of the question. And I suspect city size, and the hardness of city definition, also have an impact.
I think time (etc) from city (measured from what might be thought of as the 'city air terminal', even if not defined/described as such) to airport are as important as distance.
And also the sorts of things that indicate whether the airport is in/close to the city, or out of/distant from it - is it in the same municipality/county/whatever, police area, public transport area, dialling code, postal district,...?
LNW-GW Joint
Veteran Member
Schiphol, albeit tongue in cheek, has described itself as London's third airport.
To anybody outside the London catchment area and flying from UK regional airports, it's a viable notion.
Flying long-haul (from MAN) I certainly choose AMS over LHR any day.
London's future 3rd airport has at times been supposed to be located in Aylesbury Vale or the Essex marshes.
Today the proposed 3rd runway would obliterate the A4 north of the present Heathrow setup.
Birmingham Airport will be less than a hour's journey from parts of London (notably including Heathrow) when HS2 and Birmingham Interchange open.
Conversely, the interchange station at OOC will also make it easier to reach LHR from the west midlands and north west.
To anybody outside the London catchment area and flying from UK regional airports, it's a viable notion.
Flying long-haul (from MAN) I certainly choose AMS over LHR any day.
London's future 3rd airport has at times been supposed to be located in Aylesbury Vale or the Essex marshes.
Today the proposed 3rd runway would obliterate the A4 north of the present Heathrow setup.
Birmingham Airport will be less than a hour's journey from parts of London (notably including Heathrow) when HS2 and Birmingham Interchange open.
Conversely, the interchange station at OOC will also make it easier to reach LHR from the west midlands and north west.
Likewise.
Knowing that I can walk between connecting planes is a big plus for Schipol also, knowing I don't have to get a bus or some other "transit" thing is great. The exercise is good for me!
Having thought further, it does occur to me that for most of the smaller British cities - I'm thinking of Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow (Abbotsinch) have airports (which, to be honest, are smaller) only 10-20km away (I think only Glasgow (Prestwick) is substantially further).
And that (10-20km) is perhaps more normal globally, except for really big cities with really big new(-er) airports
Cloud Strife
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Some Polish airports are even less than that. Poznań-Ławica is only 7km, Łódź is 6km, Warsaw-Okęcie is 8km. Only Szczecin (41km), Warsaw-Modlin (42km) and Olsztyn-Mazury (60km) really buck the trend here.
6 km for Southampton and under 5 km for Norwich.
GRALISTAIR
Established Member
Even its IATA code is LGW - London Gatwick
Searching IATA airport code base for London gave me four (and a metropolitan area):
Spot what's missing!
So (going back to OP) Gatwick and Stansted both are, not many others.
Unfortunately the full list of codes is only available at great cost (USD1900 for a one time download!) - open data it is not... It would be interesting to see the full list, which covers not just airports.
| City Name | Airport Name | 3-letter location code |
| London | Biggin Hill | BQH |
| London | City Airport | LCY |
| London | Gatwick | LGW |
| London | Metropolitan Area | LON |
| London | Stansted | STN |
Spot what's missing!
So (going back to OP) Gatwick and Stansted both are, not many others.
Unfortunately the full list of codes is only available at great cost (USD1900 for a one time download!) - open data it is not... It would be interesting to see the full list, which covers not just airports.
AlastairFraser
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Someone has posted a .csv file with the data - you can import it into Excel and see the full list if you wished.
GitHub - ip2location/ip2location-iata-icao: This list contains the airport codes of IATA airport code and ICAO airport code together with country code and region name supported in IP2Location geolocation database.
This list contains the airport codes of IATA airport code and ICAO airport code together with country code and region name supported in IP2Location geolocation database. - ip2location/ip2location-i...
github.com
Unfortunately - quite apart from the fact that (as far as I can see) it doesn't have a full list of IATA 'airport' codes (which includes codes for a lot of non-airports - including metropolitan areas and (airline relevant) railway stations, etc. - which are in some way the interesting entries) - it's not a 'spreadsheeet' .csv file, but one for the ip2location database.Someone has posted a .csv file with the data - you can import it into Excel and see the full list if you wished.
GitHub - ip2location/ip2location-iata-icao: This list contains the airport codes of IATA airport code and ICAO airport code together with country code and region name supported in IP2Location geolocation database.
This list contains the airport codes of IATA airport code and ICAO airport code together with country code and region name supported in IP2Location geolocation database. - ip2location/ip2location-i...
AlastairFraser
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Hmm, I could have sworn I saw a spreadsheet style .csv file. Let me have another look
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Back in 2000 or 2001 Schiphol got a full-page feature in the London Evening Standard’s travel section, making exactly that point.
Schiphol asked KLM to find a typical passenger who used the airport instead of Heathrow or Gatwick, and came up with me - at the time I commuted between London City and Schiphol at least once a week, and often used Schiphol to transfer to other destinations.
The journalist did a telephone interview with me for about 30 minutes. All was good apart from being described as an Essex banker in the newspaper (I’m East London, definitely not Essex). And the article sensibly didn’t mention that we carried out the interview while I was waiting for a flight at Heathrow - the only time that year that I flew from LHR instead of LCY.
HSTEd
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Well I would have assumed that the Maplin Sands airport, if it had been built, would have been considered a London airport!
That's quite far out so I guess the range for London Airports is quite large.
That's quite far out so I guess the range for London Airports is quite large.
Dr_Paul
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I imagine that a high-speed railway link to central London would have been envisaged as part of the project. It's not so much distance as travelling time and convenience that is the major criterion here. Until the Piccadilly Line extension was built from Hounslow West I reckon that Heathrow was far less convenient than Gatwick for travelling to central London; indeed, even after its opening, the journey took longer and was considerably less convenient (air passengers with lots of luggage, commuters and tube stock don't happily mix) than travelling from Gatwick. It's only since fast main-line services to Paddington started that getting to and from Heathrow has been easier than Gatwick.
Yes, a fast railway to Maplin was part of the project.
Something I think is now forgotten is that - into the 1970s I think - central air terminals were the normal, with (normally) bus links to the airport. For Heathrow there was a BEA terminal at Kensington (on top of Cromwell Curve), with an LT worked bus link; and a BOAC terminal at Victoria (they worked their own buses, AIUI). Remember in those days there were far fewer air passengers than now (in the 1960s 'normal' airliner capacity was about 100 (often less)); and security wasn't the concern it has become, so many (most?) people checked in at the air terminal.