Stansted sits in the Essex countryside, well outside London. It started in 1942 as a United States Army Air Forces base. B-26 Marauder bombers flew from it, and it later became a maintenance depot. After the war the site held military stores, then charter flights, meaning flights sold as a block to holiday firms rather than seat by seat. The British Airports Authority took over in 1966.
For decades Stansted stayed the quietest of London's airports. Governments kept proposing it as the capital's third airport, and local people kept fighting the idea. The argument dragged on for years. The turning point was the terminal by architect Norman Foster, opened in 1991. Daylight floods its wide roof, and all the machinery sits in an undercroft below the floor. That layout has been copied by terminals worldwide.
Passengers finally arrived with the low-cost boom, driven by airlines that sell cheap basic fares and charge extra for everything else. Ryanair set up here in the early 1990s and grew Stansted into its largest base, with easyJet and Jet2 following. A competition ruling forced BAA to sell, and Manchester Airports Group bought the airport in 2013. Stansted has enlarged its terminal since then.