So this is your world? This is my world here. Well good morning, it is just after 10
o'clock on a Friday morning and I'm here at London City Airport which is about 10
miles from London's West End, 7 miles from the City, and three miles from
Canary Wharf. You can tell I'm here because of the planes.
At Londonist we've come to London City Airport to meet some of the team that help make
the airport tick, and it looks a bit they're a pretty fun bunch. We're going
behind the scenes with Baggage,
Flight Operations,
Ramp Services, and we even make it up into the Control Tower.
But before all that, a quick history lesson. So London City Airport sits in
Docklands. That's the name given to the riverfront and former docks in east and
southeast London. And at one time the docks here were the biggest in the world,
but when they closed the area became derelict and by the 80s it was a real
eyesore, eww. It was in 1981 that then Secretary of State for the Environment,
Michael Heseltine, formed the London Docklands Development Corporation to
redevelop the area. That resulted in the Docklands Light Railway, Canary Wharf and
London City Airport. And it was in 1987 that this old dock, which just happened
to be the right shape for a runway, had its first commercial flight. It hasn't
been without its critics though. People have campaigned for it to be closed, 'Sean
Berry off of the Green Party wants to take this unique opportunity to lobby
the new owners to close it down'. Protest about the noise, obviously. But it's
still here and since it opened the runway has been lengthened, the DLR
extended, and over four and a half million passengers now travel through
its doors every single year. And because of its unique location and
surroundings, the airport even has its own Police. London City Airport has a dedicated 24/7
aviation policing resource. We also have another unit which is to do with
something called Project Servator, which is a new style of policing that's being
rolled out. We've launched it here at City Airport. It's specially trained
officers, it's unpredictable a policing methods. At City Airport there's been days
where we've had police horses out the front as well and we've got a dock
around the area, so our Marine Support Unit will will come up and patrol.
If you're wealthy enough to be able to travel first class or even have access
to a private jet, I don't know maybe like these guys, the airport has its own
private jet centre. It sits at the western end of the runway just here, yeah.
In charge of it is Chris Clayton. So if you can imagine this is the mini airport
within an airport, so we have exactly the same facilities as you would have at any other
airport. So UK customs, immigration, security, has its own lounge. We have our
own front of house reception where we check in customers, make sure the details
are correct etc. Okay service. 90 seconds. What's the 90 second thing?
The 90 second proposition. So the 90 second proposition is on most flights
we can guarantee that customers can go from the front, the car park, all the way
through from our lounge and board their aircraft or less, and we do the same on
the reverse as well with arriving aircraft and we bring them through. So what
is it that the rich and famous actually want? Anything from setting out some
newspapers, a specific newspaper for instance. We have one customer who always
likes to have his newspaper ready on his 90 second walk through and onto his aircraft.
We've got another customer who likes a pack of peanuts and lemon. For them
that's the reason why they come here. It's that personalised touch.
They know that we recognise these small things so to speak, but
which are what makes us unique. Peanuts and a good old newspaper. They're simple
people really. Coming up, we head out onto the runway.
Meet the man looking after your bags, and get all up in the Control Towers
business.