Nine things you didn’t know about London City Airport

Ask any frequent flyer, or better yet go online with the question: ‘What’s your favourite London airport?’ Almost unanimously, London City (LCY) comes out top. It’s the nearest airport to central London (just six miles/9.65km) and trails after all other commercial London airports in size, meaning most travellers barely need to rush their breakfast before navigating their way to a morning flight. 

Chances are, with a flight at London City, you’ll be through security and to your gate – or on your return through baggage reclaim and passport control – in no time at all. Indeed, I’ve raced through it to the gate in less than 20 minutes numerous times.

It’s also designed to offer a wonderfully seamless and relaxed experience for the typical traveller. Inspired by the River Thames, the airport interior features a fluid, curving design. Not to mention that the building always looks clean and seems brilliantly well maintained. Good job, LCY.

A cherry on this aerial cake is the fabulous view of London you get just after take-off or before landing, which is why you’ll want a window seat, if you can. Sitting on the right side usually guarantees the most exemplary view of central London during the final approach, as most planes approach from the east.

Following the Thames and seeing so many landmark buildings up close and almost personal, you have to keep pinching yourself you’re not in a helicopter. For me, it’s always a thrill to spot nearby Greenwich Park – a constant throughout my life. 

The only downsides? With the gates so close by, if you’re looking to increase the daily steps on your fitness app, this isn’t the airport for you.

Ready to unlock the secrets? Here are nine things you might not know about London City...

1. Where’s the airport control tower, you ask? More than 100 miles away! LCY was the first major international airport in the world to be fully controlled by a remote digital air traffic control tower. All flights are guided to land or take off by air traffic controllers based around 115 miles away at the NATS air traffic control centre in Swanwick, Hampshire, using an ‘enhanced reality’ view supplied by a state-of-the-art digital control tower.

2. In April 2023, LCY became the first major airport in the UK to fully deploy next generation CT security scanners for its passengers, enabling travellers to pass through security without removing laptops and liquids from their hand baggage.

3. LCY stands on the King George V Dock, one of 11 docks built between 1802 and 1921, and part of two that form the Royal Docks. Construction involved reclaiming land from the dock by infilling some of it with rubble. The runway was laid on a concrete raft floating over 3,000 steel piles driven into the dock bed, then covered with 500,000 tonnes of asphalt and concrete.

4. In 1988, its first full year of operation, the airport handled 133,000 passengers. Its record is 5.1 million passengers in pre-pandemic 2019. Because it is so popular, the Government has approved increasing its annual passenger cap from 6.5 million passengers to nine million by 2031.

5. Many people think LCY is predominantly a business travellers’ airport. Especially as it is just six miles east of the City of London and three miles east of Canary Wharf, the two centres of London’s financial industry. However, in the past decade, the proportion of leisure travellers passing through London City has grown from 20% to 50%. Popular leisure destinations the airport serves include Mallorca and Malaga.

6. In December 2005, London City Airport DLR station opened on a branch of the Docklands Light Railway and its driverless trains provided rail access to the airport for the first time. Now, more than half of all passenger journeys to the airport are made via the DLR (pictured above).

7. The airport serves more than 30 destinations across the UK and Europe, with the most popular routes including Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Edinburgh. And British Airways’ London City-based subsidiary, BA Cityflyer, launches a new route this spring, with customers able to fly from LCY (as well as the existing route from Heathrow) to Olbia in Sardinia. The weekly service from 25 May 2025 will increase to twice-weekly from 16 July 2025 (Wed and Sun).

8. LCY is unusual in yet other ways. It has an especially steep glide path (the descent path an aircraft takes while landing), 5.5° as opposed to the usual 3.0° as well as having one of the world’s shortest runways. Therefore, pilots require a special training qualification and only certain aircraft can operate there, such as the Airbus 220 and A318 and Embraer E195-E2.

9. In 2023, consumer organisation Which? surveyed more than 4,000 airport users and found that LCY ranked as not just the best airport in London but the second best in the whole of the UK. The survey found that it only takes an average of ten minutes to get through security. Impressive!

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