It is de rigeur these days for even the tiniest of rural airports to pretend to greater fame by borrowing the name of a nearby metropolis. Some airlines adopt a similar strategy in an attempt to persuade passengers that flights don't deliver them to the middle of nowhere. It was a surprise, though, to find that Shoreham Airport uses as its full name Shoreham (Brighton City) Airport.
It isn't that Shoreham is that far from one of the UK's youngest cities, less than 10 minutes by train and not much more than an hour from London. This is a lot nearer to civilisation than some of those other far-flung destinations. But Shoreham claims to be "the oldest licensed airfield in the UK" – it will celebrate its centenary next year. Does it really need to link itself with the rather louche metropolis along the coast?
It can stand alone as a destination, even if you are flying nowhere. Shoreham airport turns out to be a tourist attraction, somewhere to while away an hour or so eating lunch looking out over the runway.
What is it that brings people to watch small planes taking off? There weren't any arriving passengers to greet. These were mostly local sightseeing trips and flying lessons.
Sitting beside the runway just isn't possible at large airports, and not just for security reasons. Perhaps this is why smaller airports like Shoreham are tourist attractions. They certainly aren't shopping experiences.
Shoreham's shop, in the fine old 1930s art-deco terminal, was smaller than the "visitor centre". Manned by a bunch of enthusiasts, the centre, ostensibly dedicated to the history of the airport, is a strange mixture of assorted bits and pieces, with a decidedly military, mostly Second Word War, bent.
Wars aside, visiting Shoreham is a reminder that air travel does not have to be a hellish experience. It also shows younger people that aircraft have wings, something that they may not have grasped when flying off on family holidays. At too many airports, flying is a case of passing through a windowless shopping mall down enclosed walkways that deposit you in the middle of a long metal tube. If you are lucky, you will arrive at a destination where the experience isn't quite the same. But in the UK at least air travel seems to have become divorced from the aircraft that make it possible.
The other airport story that recently made it into the media concerned BA's plans to fly business people directly from London City Airport – the only airport in the metropolis that really deserves the London tag – to the USA, at prices that only bankers used to be able to justify.
London City is just a scaled down version of larger international hubs. It may be a lot easier to navigate, making it quicker to get in and out of, but there is nothing in the least bit romantic about flying in and out of the place.
An enterprising airline might take a leaf out of the book of the maritime transport sector. Queen Mary 2 has made the ocean-going liner a fashionable way of travelling to and from New York. They don't have to go as far as to hand out flying goggles, but a visit to Shoreham shows that there are other ways of organising air travel.
http://www.shorehamairport.co.uk/
Categories: Commentary ,
Comments
All comments
You need to be registered with the IET to leave a comment. Please log in or register as a new user.