Emirates starts London Stansted flights as rival airports near capacity

A first Emirates flight between Dubai and Britain’s Stansted Airport touched down on Friday, making it the first scheduled long-haul airline to fly to London’s third busiest airport as the city’s two bigger hubs are almost full. The UK government wants to expand Heathrow but a new runway won’t be ready until 2026, which Stansted said will give it an opportunity to grow its connections to the rest of the world. London’s No.2 Gatwick is also full at the busiest times of the day. Emirates, which already operates nine daily flights between London and Dubai from Heathrow Gatwick, said that it was also attracted to Stansted because of the travel demand it expects from the 25 multinational companies, such as AstraZeneca and GSK that have bases on the Stansted side of London. Stansted is situated 40 miles north east of London and 30 miles from Cambridge, an area with fast growing tech and pharma industries, giving the airport the potential to develop into more than just the short-haul, leisure hub which it has been up until now. Stansted CEO Ken O’Toole said that looking at travel patterns within the airport’s catchment area, there was the potential to add 25 to 30 more long-haul routes and he was in talks with dozens of airlines wanting to fly from Stansted.<br/>