London City Airport: 20 Years and Going Strong
Airliners Magazine, July/AUgust 2007
By Henry Tenby
London’s famous Heathrow, Gatwick, Standsted and Luton airports are also complimented by the City’s newest aerodrome, London City Airport (LCY), which will celebrate its 20th anniversay this year. It seems like just yesterday that this airport was but a mere distant plan, but today, as any visiter will attest, London City is a busy Euro hub that conveniently connects the London financial center with major business centers on the continent.
Located at the former Royal Docks facility just 6 miles from the city center and 5 tube tube stops from the Canary Wharf financial district, London City is the London airport with the closest proximity to central London. That’s today. The concept of a city airport for London was first tabled back in 1981, and the quarter century since its inception has seen the airport grow to become one of the highest rated airports in Europe, and a start model for airport planning and development.
The initial idea for an airport in the Docklands area of London was born from a discussion that took place in 1981, between Sir Philip Beck, Chairman of John Mowlem and Co plc (a large construction company with a long history in the docks), and Reg Ward, the Chief Executive of the newly formed London Docklands Development Corportation (LDDC). The Corportation was tasked with the mandate to gentrify the Royal Docks area of London, and to improve accessibility of the area, which in those days was seen very much as London's backyard, filled with old warehouses, rusting piers, and junk yards.
In this discussion, it was decided that an innovative inner city airport could be part of the solution, and Sir Philip, himself a pilot, took the idea to Bill Bryce of Brymon Airways, the Plymouth based airline which specialized in the use of STOL aircraft including then new De Havilland Dash-7. Mowlem and Brymon developed an outline in just a few weeks as to how a STOL airport for the Royal Docks might fit in. To show that their idea was valid, on June 27, 1982, Brymon Captain Harry Gee landed a company Dash 7 on Heron Quay to demonstrate the feasibility of STOL aircraft capabilities at the location. After a length analysis of the project by city planners and public inquiries, construction of the new airport finally commenced in 1986.
Building a new airport is never an easy or quick process, and it took nearly six years from the time of inception until the first passenger carrying flights took off. Some would say London City was developed fairly quickly by comparison to other airport projects. Brymon and Eurocity Express (later renamed London City Airways) were the first airlines to provide scheduled flights at London City, and both commended Dash 7 scheduled services from the airport on October 26, 1987. On November 5, 1987, Queen Elizabeth officially opened the brand new, single runway London City facility, but as with many new ventures, the road to success is not always without its bumps and delays.
Only 15,000 passengers used the airport during its first year of operations. Business development during the early days of the airport were slow, because operations were weighed down by the airport’s own limitations. It had a very short runway, which meant only slow flying aircraft could serve the airport, such as Dash 7s and other small commuter types. This resulted in slow en route times for passengers, and most business travelers preferred to use Heathrow.
Even a five thousand foot paved runway (10/28) is considered short, and precludes larger aircraft from serving the airport to this day. The close proximity to the built up areas and towers of nearby Canary Wharf is such that only aircraft that are approved for 5.5 degree or steeper approaches are eligible to operate from the field. The highly congested airspace in the vacinity of greater London added complications when London City was added into the already very busy mix. To address the added traffic, a new airspace authority called Thames Radar was created specially to provide ATC services including radar control and flight seperation for all arrivals and departures from the increasingly busy London City airport.
