London City Airport used to be a really quaint airport. You could get from check-in to the plan in less than 10 mins. Pre-UBL and his scarywallahs if you were late, you could throw your bags over the fence, jump over and run to the plane and no one would bat an eye lid.
I think if I tried that now I would be riddled with machine gun bullets and fed to the police dogs. Actually I know that's what would happen because my neighbour (who hates me), runs the Police here.
UBL and his scarywallahs meant the airport had security, which delayed getting to the plane by 30 seconds... if you wore a suit and had shiny shoes you were normally waved through.
All these years London City Airport was the unloved child, as close as it was to Canary Wharf it seems Tarquin the investment banker preferred flying from Heathrow, as it was close to his $1.5m Chelsea studio apartment. Besides Tarquin loved taking risk with the banks money, but there was NO WAY he was going to get on a plane with propellers!
Then it all changed. The advent of small, quiet jets. DLR trains from Canary Wharf, a Nero Coffee shop, and worst of all the 2007-2017 Financial Crisis.
Budgets were cut, Tarquin could no longer have the chauffeur car from Chelsea to Heathrow and had to use a mini cab instead or worse the train. He could no longer fly business class unless his boss was with him, and he was even expected to work the few hours before his flight. No more taking it easy and treating himself to a 'travelling day'.
The end result is that the airport that serviced me and 50,000 thrill seekers a year, now services millions of people. Just to make it worse, to entertain and make the new users feel at home, gone are the 1970's seating, the feel or a private airport terminal. In comes the clinical metrosexual Bloomberg office look, together with Bloomberg terminals all over the place and pretty pastel colours and seats that look great, but leave you with a spine looking like St. Pauls Cathedral.
Damn Lehmans!