Weekend ‘carnage’ at Stansted as M11 crash causes passengers to …
"Carnage" levels of traffic at Stansted Airport led to people leaving their vehicles to walk to the terminal and a few missed flights for some. Anyone attempting to reach the drop-off and pick-up point at the Essex airport on Saturday (September 9) was caught in long queues that barely moved, with one family taking two hours to get from the A120 to the terminal.
A woman has told EssexLive that her daughter ended up missing her flight to Barcelona on Saturday afternoon, despite them allowing lots of time to get there, forcing her to spend hundreds on a flight and taxi transfer the following day. It has been claimed that a fault with the barriers on the drop-off exit led to each vehicle taking several minutes to leave.
However, Stansted Airport have said the barriers were working normally but were being "raised periodically" to ease congestion. The airport said a power cable fault caused trains to be cancelled for eight hours, and combined with a crash on the M11 that day, resulted in a much higher number of vehicles trying to get to the terminal on limited roads.
Photos from the traffic queues on the A120 show people pulling over on the side of the road and unloading luggage to then walk to the terminal. Zoe Roles, 47, from Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, said she tried to take her daughter for her flight to Spain but it took them two hours to get through the traffic, resulting in her 25-year-old daughter missing her flight.
She said: "It was an absolute nightmare and carnage. We took her there from where we live in Broxbourne, it would normally take about half an hour. We had to be there by 3.20pm and left at 1.30 to give us extra time."
Ms Roles said there were several road closures around the airport site and they had to drive a distance up and down the M11 to then access it via the A120 eastbound. She said: "We hit the traffic there and it's all down to the barriers [that] weren't working properly at the drop-off point. It was taking three to five minutes for everyone to go out.
A person unloading their car on the A120 before walking to the airport terminal (Image: Zoe Roles)
"It caused carnage for people all the way back. Lots of people got out [of their cars] and were walking with children. My daughter ended up missing her flight and had a big suitcase and couldn't go. She had to pay an extra £100 each for the next day and paid €220 for the taxi. All because of the barriers.
"People were beeping and shouting at each other and it was absolutely horrendous. It took us two hours to get up into the airport. It took us five minutes to get out. We had National Express coaches and black cab drivers and they were pushing in as they didn't want to queue. I'm very surprised there wasn't a serious accident on the A120. It was absolute carnage in that drop-off point."
She added: "I feel so sorry for people. There's people that go on budget holidays and they don't have the spare money to pay for extra flights. Some people just don't have that money and they save all year for that cheaper holiday."
People leaving vehicles early to walk from the A120 to Stansted Airport (Image: Zoe Roles)
A spokesman for Stansted Airport said: "The heavy volumes of traffic were the result of an RTC on the M11 northbound, delaying when many passengers may have arrived at the airport, plus the rail service to and from London suffering an overhead power cable fault at Broxbourne resulting in no train service for around eight hours, and with no bus replacement service in place.
"The lack of trains meant passengers who would have used this service switching to taxis, driving themselves or being dropped off by family or friends. 28 per cent of Stansted passengers would normally use rail to access the airport so this would have had a significant effect on the number of vehicles coming to the airport from that direction.
"To help ease congestion on the forecourt drop off area, the exit barriers were raised periodically to help get the higher than usual number of vehicles away quicker."