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The sheer size of the Heathrow Airport will daunt you if you're a first-timer in London. The Heathrow Airport sprawls across some 4.7 square miles and when your plane touches down on the tarmac of the Airport, you'll have to drink in the enormity of Heathrow's proportions while still sitting belted to your seat because airport authorities in London are pretty strict and don't allow passengers to disembark at terminals unless the terminals are free from traffic and planes that have landed moments ago.
The airport parking (link removed) is the most important airport of London, the second-most important airport of the city being Gatwick. The Heathrow Airport is situated in a borough named Hillingdon on the outskirts of London. Heathrow Airport is designated to be the second-most bustling airport of the world, the most bustling airport of the world being the Atlanta Hartfield Jackson International Airport of Atlanta, USA. Heathrow claims to handle more global travelers than any other airport of the planet. The Airport has undergone renovations several times since it first started operations way back in the 1930s.
The Heathrow Airport is a halting ground for more than 90 airlines that connect Heathrow to 170 global destinations. The chief airlines that operate using the Heathrow Airport as their starting or ending destination are the British Airways, the Virgin Atlantic Airways and the British Midland Airways. Heathrow handles about 70 million passengers every year. Out of this number, nearly 50% use Heathrow as a stop-over so that they might board connecting flights that take them to distant places either east of England into Asia or west of England across the Atlantic Ocean into the Americas. A sizeable chunk of the 70 million board connecting flights from Heathrow to destinations close by. And about 7 million of the 70 million land at Heathrow in order to reach places in the United Kingdom.
Get Acquainted with the Flip Side of Heathrow
Security measures are stringent at Heathrow. They have been beefed up even more after terrorism has engulfed the world since 9/11 and 7th July, 2005. The British army has been stationed at Heathrow every so often when there has been need to protect the Airport and the travelers from the acts of various miscreants and terrorists. The irony of it all is that though Heathrow has been saved from the attacks of terrorists and heinous criminals, it hasn't been spared from the mischief made by small-time thieves and robbers. Passengers have been shocked when, on reaching the conveyor belt to pick up their baggage after obtaining clearance from immigration and other checking authorities, they haven't been able to locate their luggage on the carousel. As pickpockets and thieves have flourished in Heathrow over the last few years, the airport has acquired the new and unflattering name of 'Thiefrow' for itself.
Another reason why Heathrow is getting a lot of flak from passengers as well as from the media is because the Airport has reached its bursting point. Despite being spread over several square miles of English soil, Heathrow is currently experiencing difficulty handling some 70 million travelers every year. Packed to the full and more than it can manage, Heathrow is witnessing some serious bottlenecks in the form of delayed departures and arrivals and long queues of travelers waiting to undergo checks. Planes scheduled to land at Heathrow have to frequently keep circling the London sky as often, nowadays, they aren't given permission to land because Airport officials are taking longer than ever to handle aircrafts that have landed previously and check the passengers who've landed in those aircrafts. Airport officials, it seems, can't cope with the ever-burgeoning number of passengers and aircrafts at Heathrow and are taking hours before they can complete all procedures and let incoming planes land. The Airport is thus pretty hamstrung by excessive delays that are angering the travelers. Hence, fresh revamps of the Airport terminals and grounds are in the pipeline that will hopefully ease the flow of traffic through Heathrow.
Edited by BorisTheSpider on 14/05/2013 at 12:44
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