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  London Stansted Airport

  IATA/ICAO Code:

  STN/EGSS

  Country:

  United Kingdom

  CEO:

  Ken O'Toole

  Passenger Count :

  7,146,000 (2021)

  Runways :

  04/22 - 3,049m (10,003ft)

For decades, airlines have told passengers to make sure they get to the airport with plenty of time to catch their flights. In the COVID era that has meant adding more time to navigate the extra health protocols, documentation and general inconvenience of the whole check-in process.

Three hours is the magic number

As seems common throughout the recovery chaos, passengers are once again being blamed - this time for arriving at the airport "too early." London Stansted Airport (STN) is the latest to jump on that bus, somehow magically deciding that if you arrive exactly three hours before your flight all will be well, and you will have no issues boarding on time. Here is what Stansted's chief operating officer, Nick Millar told the BBC:

"Three hours before the flight is our advice and that's what we're encouraging people to do. What we can do is reassure the traveling public that when they arrive at that time, they will go through our processes and get to their gate on the plane without concerns. We ask people to look at the websites and listen to their airlines so they are prepared when they come to the terminal building."

Just to make sure passengers understand it is they who are holding up the process, Millar added that people should ensure they were ready to go through the airport's various checkpoints, by having their boarding passes ready and taking liquids out of bags. "Then when they go through, they go through seamlessly," he said. That seems easy enough and top marks to Millar and Stanstead for so clearly unlocking the secret of getting to the gate on time. But just in case it doesn't here's the tweet the airport put out:

Discover more aviation news here!

What does the airline say?

Underlined is the rider that this is usually three hours before your flight but always check with your airline. Simple Flying did that and found that Ryanair, which has its largest base at Stansted, opens its bag drop desks two hours prior to the scheduled flight departure time. The bag drop is closed 40 minutes before departure and the airline says that if you miss that deadline "your booking could be canceled without refund and you could be prevented from boarding the plane." The real deadline is to get to the gate before the flight closes 20 minutes prior to departure.

For those who need the bag drop services and arrive three hours early, they will have an hour to get into the terminal before that service opens. Even if they time it like an F1 pitstop, they will have less than 90 minutes to get to the gate and that's where the airport, any airport, has to make sure their infrastructure makes that happen. The airport knows how many passengers will be boarding and when and the flow rate of their security and other services. From that, they can get a pretty good idea of what the outcome will be, irrespective of what time people walk through the terminal door.

Good luck trying to plead with Ryanair that you got to the airport three hours ahead as your plane takes off to Malaga without you and the family. Stansted is now at 90% of pre-COVID traffic but why don't they publish what percentage of resource capacity they have compared to pre-COVID? Why not be honest with customers and say we have 90% of traffic but only X% of resources to operate with? Then we would all know where we stand.

Source: BBC