wrote in message
...
Roland Perry wrote:
Massive queues for the 3-out-of-6 immigration desks open, while several
planes disgorge at once. But at least that meant the bags had been
delivered to the carousel by the time we got through.

The posh purple-FTR shuttle bus to the airport was replaced by a red
Citaro, all liveried-up so not a temporary thing. Had the vanity plate
'T5 FCC' disguising its age - but it was clearly not new. Ex-Boris,
maybe?

At Luton Airport Parkway, the "up" escalators are broken (no indication
of when they might be fixed) and a bus-load of PAX simply doesn't fit in
one trip of the lift. Having got to the platform, the PIS says that
"Easyjet tickets not valid on this service", which is understandable as
they don't sell northbound rail tickets!

Luton Airport is the worst of any of them. No proper connection from the
station to the airport terminals themselves, which are full of surley
staff from budget airlines.

I was born in Luton, grew up in Perth (down under), studied and worked back
in England for 10 years (77-87) including buying a house in Luton.

Now back in Perth, and Perth International Airport works much like Luton
except there is no shuttle bus to a railway station, just shuttle buses to
the City, and others to districts with 3* + hotels.

The comments about Luton Airport are just as commonly been made about Perth.
As a cabbie, I've heard it often: "Worst Capital City airport in Australia!"
Maybe it's me - (Wherever I am, the airport attracts significant adverse
comment). Traffic growth has certainly outstripped airport facilities - the
mining boom drove that. The GFC has given the Airport owners just a tad of
breathing space to sort some of the problems. But as I write, the resources
industry here is gearing for another strong cycle of development. This time,
it's led by petroleum gas extraction, processing and export, but there's
quite a few iron ore, uranium and rare minerals projects advertising for
mining and construction personnel. Fly-in-Fly-out would appear to still
dominate staff resourcing of these projects, with concommitant growth of
traffic pressure on the Airport.

SNIP

DW down under