[Anonymous]

[openfly]

BT headlines..Harrods opening in the Gatwick South Terminal.

I could never imagine Harrods selling shell suits and bling! Maybe they will have a tattoo and piercing parlour…..

[Bucksnet]

Oh dear.

I read years ago that the average income of passengers at Stansted was £43,000 and Gatwick is likely to be higher than that.

What a pathetic post.

[skywards]

And the winner for the definition of diversity goes to openfly..wink, wink. 😉

I’m sure the Harrods people will have done their marketing research.

[LeTigre]

VS use the south terminal, don’t they? So there are at least several hundred upper class pax a day plus all those on expensive Caribbean hols.

[BA744fan]

Not to mention the thousands of wealthy foreign visitors to our shores that want to pick up some last minute shopping before they leave the country.

[pdtraveller]

I find th globalisation of retail really disappointing.

A walk down orchard road in Singapore is no different to 5th avenue, the Champs Élysées, Regent street, the strip Las Vegas or any other main shopping area in any city. Dior, Burberry, Chanel, Dolce and Gabbana etc etc proliferate.

I don’t and would shop in this way but clearly people can and do, demonstrating yet again that money and taste do not go hand in hand.

Harrodsburg at LGW is simply an extension of what has happened on high streets and airport terminal are fast becoming all the same.

[conshaldow]

It appears even our airports are getting dragged into the class war currently raging on in the u.k. The resemblance is uncanny.

Heathrow would be considered upper class, Gatwick middle class and Stansted and Luton are working class airports. We need to stop looking at airports in this way. It is one of the reasons why we have capacity problems in SE England. It is putting people/airlines off flying into certain airlines simply because of the public perception of said airline.

It’s like telling someone from a working class family they cannot become a doctor simply because the public perception of the working class doesn’t see them fit to become doctors.

[SergeantMajor]

If you’d travelled from the South Terminal, you’d know how the T-shirted masses swarm there; watching them (and it’s not dissimilar from bird-watching, in more than one sense of the phrase) it’s a shocking indictment of the State of Britain Today.

I last went South about four years ago en route for a shooting weekend in Scotland using flybe. I now take the train instead.

The way some of the punters disported themselves pre-flight during August was appalling. I have never seen so many tattoos in one place before. I wouldn’t say the few theme park and beach-seeking Virgin Upper Class customers were much better, frankly.

Joking aside, postage-stamp sized polyester tops and flip flops are about the worst clothes for travel by air; should there be an accident with a fuel fire, the wearers would sustain even more horrific injuries than might otherwise be the case.

An excellent read “Nine Minutes, Twenty Seconds” sets out how some survived an emergency crash landing, and others didn’t make it despite the nine minute warning that this event was imminent.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nine-Minutes-Twenty-Seconds-Tragedy/dp/0609606336

While the key differentiator appeared to be having the motivation to live – be it someone or something they wanted to live for, or a travelling companion with them who drove them to hang in there – the second most important differentiator was not wearing artificial fibres and ensuring good, solid footwear. Polyester is especially terrible in an aircraft fire, and proper footwear allowed some to walk through the fuel fire which followed, greatly reducing the still horrific, but survivable, injuries they received.

Harrods is an ideal addition to the retail offering, particularly for those in need of better quality clothing.

The T5 Harrods gift store does a roaring trade in mugs, tea cosies and other tat, and I’m sure this new opening will be a terrific success for the Qataris.

They are pleasingly taking the flagship store upmarket and reversing the decline witnessed under the former regime of the Phoney Pharoah.

[canucklad]

Hi Conshaldow

My deep rooted Canadian liberal beliefs would at first make me agree with your comments about classifying airports into our obsession with the class system….

As someone who has used EDI & GLA….and now the drum roll PIK

I’m afraid I have to report back that purely through experience what you described …not only exists but is alive and kicking up here across the border !! : )

SergeantMajor…. “Harrods is an ideal addition to the retail offering, particularly for those in need of better quality clothing”

Thanks for making me chuckle….Maybe the LGW Harrod’s can market themselves as a “ Life Saving First Aid” shop…..

[SergeantMajor]

It would indeed be sensible. Will you be penning your suggestion to Herr Al-Thani, or should I?

[Papillion53]

Conshaldow@08:42

Is this true? Do people really judge airports in a class system manner? What baffles me is how on earth would anyone class LHR as Upper Class???? Whoever it was can’t have been through there recently! I agree with you, it doesn’t help does it. A bit like your analogy!

Seargent Major@09:44 – Attenshun! it is you isnt’t it!?? I do look at the great travelling public and wonder sometimes if “they dressed themselves” as my Mama used to remark on seeing children who had raided the dressing up playbox! Or if they have a mirror! Or worse, if they have access to water to wash!

But seriously, I always keep my closed toe shoes on until we are airborne and coming into land – and I never wear polyester! And I never change into my PJs either until we are airborne! Or crimplene, for anyone old enough to remember crimplene – slacks in your case Sar’gnt Major!

Anyway back on topic, I find H.A.Rods, as we used to call them, very useful for last minute gifts, especially for our US friends who love a monogrammed biscuit tin!

[jetplane]

Kaptain Krug, aka SM… “Phoney Pharoah”? Is this a polite form of racist VERBALdiahorrea?

[Papillion53]

Look who I found ….. LOL!

http://s319.photobucket.com/user/atco5473/media/Bear-Stuff/162.jpg.html

[conshaldow]

@Canucklad! Join the club. I live no less than 2 miles away from GLA airport so I know exactly what you mean. I completely forgot about PIK and it’s as good an example as STN and LTN are down south. It’s still my personal opinion the PIK is one of the dreakest looking airports in the world!

@Papillion53 Yes I believe so. Sorry, let me rephrase… I think LHR is upper class when compared against the other London airports. Not that it is specific to upper class people, I just think the public put the airports into these generalised “social brackets”, sometimes without even realising it.

[Author]

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