"Stansted - Home of the No-Frill ..." a Stansted Travel Page by alucas

Luton might argue the point, but with Ryanair and Easyjet both flying all over Europe from here, Stansted Airport gets my vote. Manston was a new challenger for the south-east, but only had one airline, EUJet and a fraction of the flights, so had a long way to go to catch up. Sadly the company owning both Manston and EUJet went bust, so the future of Manston is very much undecided.

There is loads of information about Stansted on VT, and I'm not going to repeat here a lot of facts that have been given elsewhere, although some of them have found their way into my tips. Lets just say that if you live on this side of London, it's the gateway to Europe.

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737 on the apron

Ryanair and Stansted

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A few years ago Ryanair started flying from Stansted, and the operation took off (sorry) in a big way and outgrew the facilities. So they built a whole satellite wing just for Ryanair, with its own access route - you don't get to go on the train - you have to walk. You do get a different view of the apron though as you trudge down the escalator, over the bridge, along the corridor, up the escalator, over the bridge, down the corridor .......

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Gate before the queue

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.......... until you finally reach the departure gate, and wait for the flight to be called. No allocated seats on Ryanair, so everyone stays close to the gate to try and get on first. Eventually the flight is announced, "please wait to be called forward", but someone twitches, and there's a rush to form a queue ......

......... where you stand for another fifteen minutes until they let you board. Such is life on the no-frills flight ! At least Ryanair are now letting the third of the flight with the lowest boarding card numbers on first, so if you get there before the check-in opens you stand a chance of geting a decent seat on the plane.

You get what you pay for - NO FRILLS ! But why spend loads on the flight when it's only a couple of hours - save it for a decent hotel. Of course there is a downside - queues at the gate because the seats are unreserved, no nasty free airline food, the seats in the newest planes don't recline AT ALL, but what do you expect if you can occasionally grab a flight for under a fiver + taxes i.e. return for two = £ 55 ( say 75 euros) from Stansted to Jerez - a 2.5 hour flight.

I can't tell you much about the area near Stansted, where to stay or where to eat - as we live so close we've never had more than breakfast on the way through - and that particular cafe in the airport has now closed. But there are one or two nice pubs in the area, so I have written tips on those.