London City Airport

Located in the Docklands and far too close to far too many things, Greater London’s second airport is much smaller than Heathrow. City Airport is so small numerous operating constraints are needed which makes the airport fascinating. There is only a single runway, located on a leftover dock turned brownfield site after the docks demise, with the airport opening in 1987. The dock is only wide enough for the actual runway so it also doubles as a taxiway so planes (depending on how the airport is being operated) might have to taxi along the full length of the runway before turning around and taking off.

A close up of a British Airways plane taking off at London City Airport

London City Airport now has a station on the DLR (opened in 2005 along with the extension to King George V) with the station having one exit to the airport and another exit to local properties because this airport is far too close to too many things. The airport has a small footprint with the walk between the station and bag drop barely 100 metres and the full end to end extent of the passenger terminal less than 500 metres. The runway is also small at 1.5 kms long (less than half the length of Heathrow's smallest runway) which means even 737s and A320s are too large for London City and only smaller planes can use this airport. The necessity for specific small planes means that budget airlines and their fleets of singular plane types don’t operate from London City.

Further constraints on the operation of London City Airport relate to sound and reducing the noise levels for the local residents (if an airport is local to residents then there is usually a problem). This means there are no flights on Saturday afternoons and the angle of incline (for taking off or landing) is much higher than almost any other airport. There are also really tall buildings in Canary Wharf less than 4 km along the flight path and also the Cable Car with its remarkably tall height just 2 km away.

London City Airport is clearly visible from the Cable Car

Because the runway is on a dock it means instead of large barbed wire fences a “barrier” is created using water. This does mean it is really easy to take good photos of taking off and landing planes at a close range. One of these planes (until 2020) came all the way from New York JFK airport.

LCY-JFK was a once running flight on a British Airways A318 all first class service. The outbound journey was BA1 and returned with code BA2 with the prestigious flight numbers alluding to the target demographic. The A318 is the smallest and least constructed plane in the A320 family and is sometimes known as a baby bus. It started at London City and then because of the plane's short range stopped off in Shannon, Ireland for refuelling and for the passengers to go through customs before the journey across the pond to New York. But the return flight was direct, this is still the same plane so you might question what changes when you travel back to London, well travelling east you have the jet stream in your favour which propelled the plane into London.

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