October 17th - Wondered which airport terminal is the busier? Wonder no more...
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 17 October 2023
⏱️ 6 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today's travel podcast is an exclusive report about the busiest airport terminals in the UK – if you agree with Jean-Paul Sartre that "Hell is other people" you might want to use Heathrow T4 rather than T5. The inside story is all laid out in today's podcast and here.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder. It's Tuesday the 17th of October and I can guarantee you are the first people to hear about this new and, well, I would say exciting research. You would make your own conclusion. This is an exclusive table of the busiest airport terminals in the UK. |
| 0:27.5 | Now I think many people will be aware that Heathrow is the busiest airport, Gatwick's 2nd, |
| 0:33.5 | Manchester 3rd, Stanssted 4th. But those airports all have different numbers of terminals. |
| 0:41.4 | And so therefore, I thought, well, I wonder what the busiest terminals are. Because if you know |
| 0:48.9 | that, then you can be prepared for a certain degree of activity. And you might also think, well, I'm actually, I'd rather fly from a quieter term |
| 0:57.6 | and also you can have a look at what those are. |
| 1:00.2 | All of this information is going into the independent. |
| 1:03.3 | And let me tell you the chief findings and absolutely the headline. |
| 1:07.3 | And I think there's an aircraft, you might be able to hear it rumbling in the background |
| 1:11.8 | just close to the approach to the northern runway at Heathrow going in that's a British Airways |
| 1:18.7 | aircraft going to Terminal 5 which is the main hub and it's also the busiest terminal in the UK |
| 1:25.9 | 100,000 passengers on average in September and I've done it all |
| 1:31.1 | on the September traffic figures. The next along is not a Heathrow terminal, not a Gatwick |
| 1:40.0 | or a Manchester terminal. It is Stansted Airport, which is a single terminal airport, the busiest such in the UK, |
| 1:47.6 | I think in Europe, possibly in the world. |
| 1:51.6 | Gatwick, of course, has a single runway like Stansted, but it only has, it has two terminals. |
| 1:58.1 | And talking of Gatwick, their their two terminals take the third and fourth |
| 2:01.5 | place slightly busier one is north terminal which is the main hub for easy jet |
| 2:08.6 | then fifth and six places well it's the two terminals in Heathrow's central area |
| 2:16.1 | Terminal three and Terminal 2. And those are, well, it's |
| 2:22.3 | interesting that Terminal 3 is actually ahead of Terminal 2 because, well, for goodness sake, |
| 2:29.9 | the Terminal 2 was an incredibly expensive new project terminal three has been kicking around but |
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