Tag Archives: London airport

articles, news, transport

Why does Atatürk Havalimani* have all the money?

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* havalimani :  airport

Ataturk-check-in

Istanbul’s gleaming and expanding airport is a symbol of a nation going places …

… Heathrow is not,
argues Boris Johnson.
—

Heathrow-check-in

The other night we were filling in time at Istanbul airport, and I was watching an official dart around on one of those new Segway gizmos.  Have you seen one?  They are extraordinary.  It was as though his feet had grown wheels.  This way and that he sheepdogged the passengers, twisting and curvetting and generally running rings round them like some Spanish midfielder.

“What a poser !” I exclaimed.  “He’s just showing off.  He doesn’t need that thing at all.”  And then he pushed down the stick and he shot off into the distance like Usain Bolt – and we understood why he was equipped with electric feet.

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articles

No Third Runway at Heathrow

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Like all parents, I morph into a second-rate, unpaid chauffeur at the weekends, and on Sunday I copped the ultimate horror: a trip to the airport. The nearer we got to Heathrow, the thicker the traffic became.

We inched down the A312 and at every traffic light I became more and more nervous that we would miss the flight, so that, by the time we came to the drop-off zone outside terminal three, I had to bundle the kid in the general direction of departures while fending off two separate officials who were taking down the details of my car. Continue reading No Third Runway at Heathrow →