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In London, we’re spoiled for choice when it comes to flight options. Most cities have one or two airports at the very most, but a whopping six are easily reachable from the capital – including some of the planet’s mightiest air hubs.
If you’ve got a choice of which London hub to fly into or out of for your next trip, you might want to take into the one which has been named as the eighth most stressful on Earth. A recent ranking by Condé Nast Traveller (CNT) has named Gatwick among the most hair-pulling airports in the world.
To determine which terminals are most likely to raise your blood pressure, the travel magazine considered a range of factors including the percentage of journeys which take off or land on time and how long security queues tend to be, plus staff friendliness and accessibility.
The UK made two appearances on CNT’s list: Gatwick at eight, and Manchester at three. You can read more about what makes travelling through MAN so intense place here.
According to CNT, Gatwick’s main issue is essentially that it punches above its weight. Despite being the second busiest airport in the country, it only has one runway, which means that congestion and bottlenecks are not uncommon. There’s pressure to have everything running smoothly, which is basically impossible because one small hiccough can ‘ripple quickly across schedules’ and cause widespread disruption.
Despite CNT’s rating, Gatwick generally gets decent reviews from customers. The Telegraph recently named it the sixth best airport in Britain (out of 30), which placed it as the third best in London. Plus, any issues with bottlenecking could be eased by the end of the decade, when the West Sussex hub is due to double its capacity and gain a second runway. That won’t fix the distress you feel when you have to pay £10 to drop someone off though, as that fee recently increased.
In other London airport news, Heathrow is in the midst of a multi-billion pound renovation, Luton is due a brand new terminal, Stansted is trying to boost its passenger numbers and London City has once again been named as the best capital’s air travel option. We told you – Londoners are spoiled for choice.
Did you see that these are all the upgrades and new services coming to London’s transport network in 2026?
Plus: All the brand-new routes launching from London Stansted in 2026.
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