A Brief History of Luton
Luton is about 35 miles from Central London, but for much the same reason that Gatwick is called London Gatwick, Luton is now called London Luton. A practise I consider dishonest.

Luton has been a small local airport since time immemorial, but around 30 years ago, perhaps a bit earlier it started to get the idea that bigger is better and there's always a need for somewhere for holiday traffic to fly from without clagging up space too close to London. So it started cashing in on the ballooning package tour market. 'Squeeze 'em in and fly 'em cheap. So Luton set out on a course of expansion, pitched their landing fees lower than the competition and started attracting 'lesser' airlines to set up shop. This worked, but the infrastructure of the airport didn't keep up.

In the 80's and 90's Luton was overcrowded, tacky and definitely not my airport of choice. But it did the business and around 1995 it started to bring the airport buildings up to date.

A Warning
It was about then I developed my dislike of  Ryan Air. The job started taking me to Dublin and as Ryan Air tickets were cheap and Luton is only a 30 minute spin up the M1 from my place I started to fly with them. The first few trips were uneventful, but I started hearing some very weird stories about them. Then they scored! I'd done an overnight trip, and got to Dublin airport with plenty of time to catch the 10:00 flight back to Luton. Except it didn't turn up and the excuse given was that it was still on the ground as Luton was closed with fog. Well a guy standing next to me got on his mobile phone and spoke to his office, very conveniently at Luton Airport. Fog? It was a beautiful sunny morning! He muttered something like, "Again!". So they offered us a flight to Stansted, as the next Luton plane didn't leave till 3:00. Given I now knew they'd lied once, I, and around a couple of dozen others decided to take the Stansted plane on the grounds it was here, and Stansted is only around 45 minutes drive to Luton (where my car was parked). Better at Stansted than being abandoned in Dublin. So the Stansted flight left on time and got to Stansted. Then another shock. No way were they going to provide a bus or something to get us to Luton. We'd volunteered to take the Stansted flight, and we were at Stansted - end of story. Then I found that there was no direct bus or train connection to Luton and a £70 cab fare was more than I'd paid for the tickets in the first place.

In the end I got someone from the office to come and collect me and drop me at Luton to pick up my car. By the time I got to Luton, I was charged an extra days car parking because it was now something like 5 o'clock and the Ryan Air flight from Dublin had landed an hour ago. I was not pleased. Since then I haven't flown Ryan Air, there are other airlines to Dublin and because of that I don't need to go to Luton Airport.

They've Finished Now
Because of Ryan Air, Luton is my least used airport, despite being the second nearest to my home and pretty accessible. A pity really, the rebuilding of Luton has finished now and by the little I've seen dropping off a colleague, a very nice job they've made. The decor of the main departure lounge is a bit 'cold' but it's roomy and gives the impression you can lose a lot of people in it without it feeling overcrowded.

The Official View 

By Air For a far less cynical, much more detailed look at Luton, try Luton Airport Info, better and more to the point than the official site.
By Train Railway information is plentiful but hard to pin down. Due to the number of different companies running trains on British tracks these days, it’s a two stage process to find the times and prices of trains. The track is now owned by Network Rail (at the time of writing) but the name National Rail gets in there somewhere. This site lets you make enquiries of train times from anywhere to anywhere, and the site is good. It tells who runs the trains, but it doesn’t tell which station to catch it from (so for Luton, you’ve got to know that you’re going from St. Pancras). What it doesn't tell you is the prices. For that you’ve got to identify who runs the trains and go to their web site.
A good source of links to train companies is UK Railways which then directs you to the relevant site. The sites themselves are variable, some give you everything you need to know, prices, special deals, the lot. Others are very coy, and tell how wonderful it is to ride their trains, but not what it costs. The best source of rail info is the Rail Help Desk, dial 0345 484950 when you arrive, it’s a local call but you’ll need small change to use the payphones. These people are very helpful, give you the times, the stations, the train companies, the prices and most (but not all) of the deals as well.

By Bus and Coach The national bus and coach network has got it together much better than the trains. To all intents and purposes this site is a one stop shop - timetable, bookings, the lot. Check out the National Express site, it’ll tell you everything you need to know nationwide.

Page updated: 02/12/07.