A London diary entry on Heathrow slipping to second-busiest in Europe, London bus drivers running on empty, and the strange loyalty you develop toward the infrastructure that makes your life miserable
Heathrow has lost its position as Europe’s busiest airport to Istanbul, according to new figures out this week, and my genuinely first reaction, before I’d even processed why I cared, was something close to indignation, which is strange because I complain about Heathrow more than almost any other single thing in my life.
Why Losing A Crown I Never Wanted The Airport To Have Still Somehow Stung
I have queued for what felt like geological ages at Heathrow security, missed a connection there once in genuinely dramatic fashion, and sworn never to fly through it again on at least three separate occasions. And yet reading that Istanbul has overtaken it produced this odd little pang of something like civic pride, wounded and slightly absurd, for an airport I have never once described as anything other than a nightmare.
What This Actually Says About How Attached You Get To A City’s Infrastructure, Even The Bits You Hate
I think it’s less about the airport itself and more about what losing that title quietly implies, some small signal that London’s centrality as a global hub is shifting, even in a fairly minor, statistical way. You don’t realise how much of your identity is tied up in your city’s rankings and reputations until one of them slips, and even then it’s the pettiest possible thing to feel proprietary about.
Meanwhile, The People Actually Keeping This City Moving Are Falling Apart
In genuinely more serious news this week, London bus drivers have reportedly been “breaking down” from tiredness after working thirteen days in a row, which put my petty Heathrow feelings into fairly stark perspective. It’s easy to get sentimental about airport rankings and forget that the actual, unglamorous infrastructure of this city runs on people doing exhausting, underappreciated jobs with far too little rest between shifts.
How These Two Stories Sat Together In My Head This Week
An airport losing a largely symbolic title made headlines, while bus drivers working genuinely dangerous, fatigue-inducing schedules got a smaller, quieter mention further down the news roundup, and something about that imbalance has bothered me since I read it. It’s the kind of thing that makes you want to actually look up how your own bus route’s drivers are treated rather than just grumbling when the 176 is five minutes late.
What I’m Actually Taking Away From A Week Of Airports And Buses
Mostly a renewed, slightly guilty appreciation for every single person keeping London physically moving, whether that’s a driver on day thirteen of a punishing run or ground staff at an airport I’ve spent years complaining about. The rankings will keep shifting one way or another; the people doing the actual, exhausting work deserve rather more attention than they’re currently getting.