London City Airport

Heathrow is huge, Gatwick is full, Stansted and Luton are far out. And then there is London City: an airport in the middle of the old dock basins in the east of the city, with a single short runway, a terminal without jet bridges and an approach so steep that only a handful of aircraft types are allowed to land here at all. If you collect airports, you cannot skip LCY – and if you want to understand why you mostly see Embraer jets and Airbus A220s here, you have to start with the glide slope.

From dock to airport

The Royal Docks were once one of the largest port areas in the world. When shipping moved away in the 1970s, huge expanses of water and empty quays were left behind. In the early 1980s, the idea arose of building a short takeoff airport – a so-called STOLport – on the narrow strip of land between Royal Albert Dock and King George V Dock. The drivers were the construction company Mowlem and the regional airline Brymon Airways.

To show that it would work, a Brymon pilot set a de Havilland Canada Dash 7 down on the Heron Quays wharf in the middle of the Docklands in 1982. The four-engine Dash 7 was built for exactly this kind of work: short runways, steep approaches. After planning permission in 1985 and 1986, Mowlem built the airport in about two years. On October 26, 1987, the first scheduled flights started, and in November Queen Elizabeth II officially opened the airport.

In the early days, London City was a pure turboprop airport. The runway measured only 1,080 meters, the glide slope was 7.5 degrees, and the main aircraft in use were the Dash 7 and the Dornier 228. The breakthrough came in 1992 with the runway extension: with the shallower angle of 5.5 degrees, jets could land for the first time, above all the four-engine BAe 146 and later its successor, the Avro RJ. Over the years the airport changed hands several times – from Mowlem via the Irish businessman Dermot Desmond and a consortium around Global Infrastructure Partners to Canadian pension funds. Since 2025, Macquarie Asset Management has held the majority.

The steep approach: why 5.5 degrees?

At almost all commercial airports, aircraft descend on final approach at about 3 degrees. London City requires 5.5 degrees. The reason is the location: the runway is short, buildings surround it, and to the west the towers of Canary Wharf rise into the sky. A shallow approach would lead too low over the city and use up too much runway. With the steep angle, aircraft clear the obstacles high up and still touch down early.

For the aircraft this is no small matter. Descending steeper means descending faster without picking up speed. An aircraft type has to prove that it can fly this approach safely and stop in time on the short runway, and it needs its own approval from the authorities for that. Not only the aircraft type but also every airline needs a permit, and the crews undergo additional training. How an ordinary instrument approach is set up and how you can spot the difference is explained in the article on the ILS approach.

Approved aircraft types

Because every type has to be approved individually for the steep approach, the list is short. As of March 2026, the following types may fly to London City in scheduled service:

The Airbus A220-100 – originally developed as the Bombardier CS100 – received approval for the steep approach in April 2017. The larger A220-300 is not on the list so far. A real milestone was set by Helvetic Airways on March 26, 2025, when it landed with the first Helvetic E195-E2. Since then the E195-E2 has been the largest aircraft allowed to operate on schedule at London City.

If you want to tell the Embraer generations and lengths apart, the article Telling E-Jets apart helps. For the turboprops there is the guide Telling ATR and Dash 8 apart.

Historic visitors

Some types have disappeared from London City but belong to the airport’s history. Besides the Dash 7 and the BAe 146, the main one is the British Airways Airbus A318: from 2009 the airline flew to New York JFK with an all-business-class layout. The route was suspended during the pandemic in 2020 and never returned. On the page for the Airbus A318 you can find more about the smallest member of the A320 family. For a long time, airlines such as CityJet with Avro RJ jets and VLM Airlines with the Fokker 50 also shaped the picture – both are history in that form.

A shallower additional approach for larger jets

In March 2026, the airport started the public consultation on a plan that could change the type list significantly. Alongside the 5.5-degree approach, an additional approach at 4.49 degrees has been applied for, based on precise satellite navigation. It is intended only for specially approved new-generation aircraft; the airport names the A320neo as an example. According to the airport, the ground track of the approaches stays the same, and only the descent profile over the last few kilometers changes. The public consultation ran until mid-May 2026. A decision by the UK aviation authority was not known by mid-October 2026 – until then the existing list applies.

Who flies to London City

BA CityFlyer, the regional subsidiary of British Airways, sets the picture. Its Embraer jets link London City with cities in the UK, Ireland and on the Continent, and in summer with holiday destinations too. That ties the airport closely to the International Airlines Group and the alliance oneworld.

Besides that, you mainly see European network and regional airlines. According to the latest overview, these include Swiss, KLM to Amsterdam, Luxair to Luxembourg, ITA Airways to Milan Linate, Air Dolomiti to Frankfurt, Aurigny to Guernsey and – according to the schedule through the end of October 2026 – Loganair to the Isle of Man. Routes and airlines change with every schedule change, especially at an airport this small. So check the current departures and arrivals board before your visit.

Business jets at the Jet Centre

London City is not only a scheduled-service airport. Since 2002 there has been its own Jet Centre for business aviation, which mainly attracts customers from the City and from Canary Wharf. Here too, only types with steep-approach approval may come. Over the years, several manufacturers have had their jets certified for it, including Dassault with several Falcon models – most recently the Falcon 6X was added in October 2025.

For spotters this is a small bonus: between scheduled flights, business jets keep turning up, with registrations from all over Europe. How to tell the common families apart is covered in the article Spotting business jets.

Runway direction in use: 27 or 09?

The runway runs east–west. As everywhere, aircraft take off and land into the wind. With a westerly wind, runway direction 27 is in use: the aircraft come in from the east and take off toward the west. With an easterly wind the picture flips to 09 – then landings approach from the west over the Docklands, with the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf behind you. For many spotters this very combination of steep approach and skyline is the dream shot.

Because the airport is so compact, from a good position you see both directions. Still, it is worth checking the wind and the active runway before you set off. How to judge this reliably is explained in the article Understanding runway direction in use at airports. You follow it live with a flight tracker – the basics are in the article Flight tracking with ADS-B.

Spotting at Royal Albert Dock

The classic among the locations is the north bank of Royal Albert Dock. A waterside path runs along there opposite the runway, separated by the dock basin. From here you see practically every movement: landings, takeoffs, taxiing aircraft and parts of the apron. The area is reached by the Docklands Light Railway, for example via the Royal Albert station, or on foot from the terminal over the Connaught Bridge. Nearby is the Docklands campus of the University of East London.

The location has one catch: from the north bank you look south. During the day the sun is therefore behind the aircraft, and you shoot into the light. It gets better in the early morning and late afternoon, when the sun is at the side. How to work this out in advance is shown in the article on the Sun position at the photo spot.

Further options are around the terminal: to the right of the building there are views of the runway and part of the apron, and the road toward the Jet Centre runs past the business jet parking area. What is currently allowed and accessible there can change because of construction work.

Remote tower and new taxiways

London City is making aviation history not only on approach. Since January 2021, it has been controlled by remote tower, the first major airport in the UK to be. Instead of in a tower at the airfield, the controllers sit in the control center of the British air navigation service NATS in Swanwick, about 130 kilometers away. Cameras at the airport give them a live picture, transmitted over several separate lines.

On the ground, too, a lot has happened. In November 2020, a parallel taxiway and eight additional parking stands entered service. Before that, aircraft often had to taxi back along the runway, which limited capacity. Since July 2023 there have been so-called EMAS systems at both runway ends: arrester beds made of crushable material that safely stop an aircraft that overshoots.

The terminal is small and designed for short distances. There are no jet bridges; passengers walk across the apron to the aircraft. For spotters who fly themselves, this occasionally offers nice views of the aircraft during boarding.

Noise protection and growth

The location in the middle of a residential area shapes operations. There are no flights at night, and at weekends there is a long break from Saturday noon to Sunday noon. A request to extend the Saturday hours into the early evening failed in 2023 at the borough of Newham and in 2024 also with the government. What was approved in August 2024, on the other hand, was a higher passenger cap: instead of 6.5 million, up to 9 million passengers a year have been allowed since, plus a few additional flights in the early morning. The cap of 111,000 flight movements a year remained unchanged.

The airport is still some way from these limits. In 2025, about 3.74 million passengers used it, with just under 51,000 takeoffs and landings. London City has therefore not yet regained the pre-pandemic record of just over 5.1 million passengers from 2019.

London City compared

Among London’s airports, London City is the smallest and the most special. Heathrow delivers long-haul by the minute, with well-known approach spots such as Myrtle Avenue and Hatton Cross – tips on them are collected in the Heathrow guide. Gatwick is the busiest single-runway airport in the region, while Stansted and Luton live mainly off low-cost airlines.

London City complements this mix perfectly: what you see here, you hardly see at the big airports – at least not at this angle. If you are planning a London tour, you can combine LCY nicely with a day at Heathrow and so cover almost the full range of British air traffic in two days.

Conclusion

London City is an airport that follows its own rules. The short runway between two dock basins and the 5.5-degree glide slope determine who may land here: Embraer regional jets, the Airbus A220-100, turboprops from ATR and De Havilland Canada and a number of business jets. Larger narrowbody jets stay out until further notice – whether that changes with the applied-for 4.49-degree approach will be decided in the procedure at the aviation authority.

For spotters, the picture is what counts in the end: steep approaches, water in the foreground and the Canary Wharf skyline in the background. If you keep the weekend break, runway direction and sun position in mind, you can get shots out of half a day in the Royal Docks that you won’t find at any other London airport.