Tag: London Stansted Airport

No Frills, No Thrills

No Frills, No Thrills

Queuing is as quintessentially British as fish and chips, a Sunday roast or chicken tikka masala. I’m all for it. It appeals to my first-come-first-served sense of fair play. And it makes city living just a bit more bearable. Every-man-for-himself is where chaos lies and the Devil thrives. But even I have a limit. Regular readers may recall I recently spent a few days in Sitges, near Barcelona, visiting old friends who’ve just become newbie expats and purveyors of apparel to the queens. Being there was fun, getting there (and back) not so. The entire journey felt like one long, dreary line – through security, through passport control, at the departure gate, up the steps to the plane in the drizzle. All that shuffling just to board a flying bus so stripped back that clinging to the undercarriage of an RAF troop carrier would hold more appeal. This was no frills, no thrills Ryanair, an airline that bombards its punters with emails, changes the rules of the game just for fun, befuddles with an incomprehensible cabin bag policy and pisses off by ‘randomly’ allocating seats that all seem to be in the middle. Statistically, how likely is that? And the flight was an hour late both ways. Oh, the glamour of it all. I drank through it.

Ryanair’s current strapline is ‘Low Fares Made Simple’. Navigating your way through the endless maze of ‘extras’ on their website ain’t simple and, with a monopoly on the London Stansted to Barcelona route, it ain’t cheap either.

Hell won’t be all torture and torment; it’ll be an eternal Ryanair queue going nowhere.

Ironically, real buses here in Norfolk often now come with leather seats, free WiFi and charging sockets for fancy phones. And this is supposed to be a backwater.

It’s a Fair Cop

One of our favourite Bodrum Belles took us to the airport for our airlift back to Blighty with Sleazyjet. We shall be forever in her debt. It was our first experience of Bodrum’s brand spanking new international terminal building. Very impressive it was too but, as with much of Turkey, not quite finished. I’ve always thought of airport buildings as the new cathedrals, built high and mighty to invoke awe in the great unwashed (or in Bodrum’s case, the great sunburned). Bodrum’s new edifice is a lofty triumph in steel, marble and fresh paint. It puts Stansted’s tired old concrete shed with its stalactites of filth dripping from the ceiling and duck-taped carpets in the shade (why do Britain’s airports have carpets anyway?). Catering arrangements at the new terminal were an expensive shambles. Much of the food hall had yet to open. Bewildered staff at the only available eatery hadn’t a clue what they were doing; thrown to the lions with no training, no doubt. This led to much tut-tutting and foot tapping from the hungry hordes.

The flight home was an uneventful affair. That was until we landed. The bottle-blond cabin crow swung open the aircraft door to the sight of a small platoon of armed police waiting outside. The corporate perma-grins dropped out of position and we were politely asked to re-take our seats. A name was announced across the tannoy. A handsome and well-constructed young man (who I’d greatly admired back at Bodrum Airport) swaggered down the aisle and joined the waiting bobbies. They handcuffed him and off they trotted. It was all done with the minimum of fuss. There was neither argument nor struggle. His pretty missus and their two young children followed him off the aircraft. She didn’t seem at all surprised by the ambush and the kids remained calm. She casually flip-flopped down the tunnel with the jolly sprogs in tow. People will do anything to get to the front of the queue at passport control.