One of the perks of being an editor with your favourite weekly professional science magazine beginning with N is that I get to go to two or three international conferences a year, as well as visiting labs and generally hanging around in bars.
The downside, for anyone living in or near London, is that one is constrained to schlap one’s carcass to one or other of London’s horrible, strike-strewn and overcrowded airports, there to be patronized by British Airways (motto – ‘We Give Ourselves Airs’) which is so confident of your custom that should you foolishly choose to fly with any other carrier you are forced to walk to a departure gate somewhere in Berkshire.
However, so inured are those chained to the Great Wen to this state of affairs that when the Croxi relocated to Norfolk some four years since, the more metropolitan of my friends and colleagues asked, astonied, if one could get sun-dried kumquats north of the M25; whether we’d be forced to breed whippets and keep coal in the bath; and – more pertinently for the present discussion – what would I do for foreign travel? as if we residents of Norfolk are used to nothing more chic than a Surrey with a Fringe On Top.
My answer, which invariably raised a snigger, was Norwich International Airport.
Yes, friends, Norwich International Airport, located an easy 35-minute cab ride from the Maison des Girrafes, and, because it is situated on the northern outskirts of Norwich, it is reached from Cromer with no delays or hold-ups except for the occasional highwayman tractor. No silly Gatwick Expresses or overpriced Heathrow Shuttles; no crowds, no traffic jams on the M4, no stress, no fuss.
Norwich International Airport is basically one big room, and the chirpy check-in person is likely the same one who checks your boarding pass as you head out to the plane. Norwich International Airport serves North Sea gas rigs, as well as a variety of domestic destinations – Mr G. S. of Glasgow, for example, a regular visitor to the Salon des Giraffes, rather cannily flies to Norwich from Edinburgh.
But the best-kept secret of Norwich International Airport is the KLM City Hopper (a perky little Fokker) that connects Norwich with Schiphol, in Amsterdam, and thence the world.
A Little Fokker, recently. The arrival of an editor from a well-known weekly professional science magazine beginning with N caused consternation among the local community of authors, especially those whose manuscripts had been rejected
Schiphol is a much friendlier and less stressful place than Heathrow, partly because it’s Dutch, but also because – unlike Heathrow – all of it seems to be in the one single terminal. And because KLM seems to be more or less the same thing as Delta, and these two share their codes (as I believe it is called) with a plethora of other carriers with a degree of intimate interdigitation that were bodily fluids not actually exchanged one could slap me round the chops with a handy hemichordate, one finds oneself transported seamlessly from Norwich International Airport to practically anywhere else in the world with the grace and majesty of a ripe ovum in its stately ciliation down a fallopian tube to the accompaniment of The Blue Danube.
Why, as I write this, I am in Schiphol, having enjoyed a civilized breakfast, waiting to board the Norwich flight home, after wafting here from Salt Lake City via Minneapolis. The Schiphol-Norwich flight is so short that because of the time-zone difference, it arrives five minutes before it departs. And when I get to Norwich I’ll be met by a Cromer cab driver and whizzed home in a seeming instant – rather than arriving at Heathrow only to battle lots of trains before finally arriving in Cromer, an exercise perhaps even more exhausting than the actual flight. Heathrow? You can keep it, mate.
Who’s sniggering now, eh?
I have not laughed, I think it’s very serious.
I have laughed, Henry — I shall take the image of you ‘wafting’ with me to my grave.
Your post reminded me that I once flew from Paris to Southend in a small twin-engined plane carrying a crew of two and an identical number of passengers. Needless to say, collecting the bags at Southend International was a snap.
My fair city is also not a major airline hub, and the airport is relatively pleasant and accessible. Visitors are often surprised that I’m willing to pick them up or drop them off at the airport, and that it’s a doddle to do so. Friend of mine once drove a Ford F-350, hauling a living quarters horse trailer (sleeping berths for three humans, kitchen, bathroom, tackroom, plus spaces for four horses, all present at the time) through the Departure lanes to drop someone off before heading up north to a tournament, without a hitch.
London Heathrow is pretty bad, but IMO the Worst. Airport. Ever. [insert Comic Book Guy voiceover here] is Newark Liberty. Looked as if it had experienced a recent cholera epidemic, and no one had bothered to clean up. Yuck.
I haven’t flown from, or to, or via, the London airports more than a couple of times in the last two decades, for precisely the sort of reasons you allude to. Manchestuh International for me, every time… which is an even shorter taxi ride from Chez Aust (15 min) than Norwich is from Gee Towers. Manchestoh Airport is also owned by the City of Manchester, rather than by those
money-grubbing slimeballssomewhat-underprepared-for-snow-folk-at BAAInterestingly, Schiphol is one of my least liked airports. Is it just me, or do you still have to go through passport control again when flying back from France to the UK? Nearly missed my flight several times because of that. Otherwise I guess it’s fine. One of my favourite is Stuttgart, very nice and new. Some of the worst are, unsurprisingly, further abroad: Baghdad is a complete nightmare, but then you would expect that. I went through three security checks, including pat downs, emptying the car of luggage for X-rays and sniffer dogs. That’s before entering the airport. Once inside, none of the departure boards worked, and the staff had no idea if my flight was on time or, indeed, whether it would fly at all. Luckily there is a cafe with nice people to while the time away.
I am slightly partial to St. John’s airport (Newfoundland), because it is small, the customs people were very friendly (even at 1:00 AM when I arrived), and it contains a non-bewildering array of retail outlets including the necessary Tim Horton’s doughnut/coffee shop.
Heathrow, I can happily avoid, thankyewverymuch. Unfortunately on the couple of occasions I’ve wanted to get to the Sanger Centre in Hinxton, there hasn’t really been a sensible alternative (no direct flights to Stanstead, or reasonable connections to Cambridge, for example).
But – my current least favourite airport is George H.W. Bush International in Houston. It is huge, and the time I changed planes, I had to get from terminal 1 to terminal 3, a half-hour trek easily, plus a line up for shuttle bus (the monorail being either broken, or closed due to terrorist threat, I don’t remember which). Said shuttle bus took about one minute and ended up about 100 yards away from where it started.
On the return trip, I basically hiked as fast as I could in the opposite direction, arriving at the terminal 1 gate just as they were finishing boarding. Unbelievable.
I guess a direct flight from Toronto to either Manchester or Schipol and a short connection on to Stansted might be the way, Ricardipus. However, I seem to remember that Stansted is rather badly served by internal UK shuttle flights.
Whenever I was flying to/from Norwich International Airport, I would walk to /from the airport. It seemed somehow appropriate.
BTW, I think the airport got the “International” designation when they started flights to Suffolk.
BTW, love the “little fokkers” tag, very appropriate.
The frustrating thing about your Norwich-Schipol flight is that it spelt the death knell for the original Suckling Airways Cambridge-Schipol flight. A tiny 7 seater, as I recall, it nevertheless was wonderfully convenient (it went to Manchester too). Now I have to rely on Stansted or Luton or even London City which, although preferable to Heathrow – well anything is preferable to Heathrow in my view – is much less convenient. So enjoy!
@Alejandro – cheer up!
@Stephen – I have a wondrous traveler’s tale about bush-flying in a Cessna in Kenya but this comment box is too small to contain it.
@Kristi – ‘living quarters horse trailer’ – that must be HUGE. Please supply pictures.
@nico – yes, one does sometimes come across passport controls at Schiphol, whose placement does indeed appear to be entirely random.
@ricardipus – is George H. W. Bush airport the one that used to be called Houston Intercontinntal? The one time I was there (connecting between Los Angeles and Austin) the ‘intercontinental’ tag raised a smile. How very Texan, I thought, to think bigger than yer regular International!
@Bob – you walked to the airport. That is cool.
@Athene – a flight from Cambridge to Schiphol? What fun!
Oh yes! Suckling Airways! Never flew them, but thought the idea was wonderfully romantic.
@cromercrox – Living quarters trailers are one of those weirdly American phenomena, and they are indeed HUGE. I’ll try to get some photos from different perspectives (e.g. inside the horse box part of it). The F-350 pickup truck alone is probably the size of a small apartment in Tokyo.
Well, the Vancouver airport is a very busy one, but it somehow manages to be awesome! (Best in North America, in fact, and usually up there in the world rankings too). Not too big but with a great feeling of space, not too crowded, nice cafes and shops, polite and friendly immigration people (well, the Canadian ones, anyway. The Americans not so much. Or maybe it’s just that I resent being interrogated by US immigration while still on Canadian soil).
However, the best features are the interesting art work (mostly by local First Nations artists) and aquariums found throughout the airport. Some of the art, such as Bill Reid’s Jade Canoe, is world-class. My favourite part is the waterfall in the international arrivals hall, but there are lots of nice little areas. I’m very lucky to have such a nice airport as the one I spend the most time in – you should all come and see it!
When we fly to the UK we usually try to get a flight to Manchester, since we can get a train from the terminal directly to York. Unfortunately, it’s usually cheaper to fly to London.
Worst airports I’ve ever been to, in no particular order: Dallas, Chicago O’Hare, LA, Houston (nothing specific against the US, it’s just my most frequent destination!)
Hurrah for small and manageable airports! Visitors to Omaha are often surprised to find that getting to the airport here an hour before the flight is more than ample for a leisurely process…
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