Stansted Airport railway station

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Stansted Airport railway station" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (April 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Stansted Airport
General information
Location	London Stansted Airport, District of Uttlesford England
Grid reference	TL556235
Managed by	Greater Anglia
Platforms	3
Other information
Station code	SSD
Classification	DfT category B
History
Opened	1991
Original company	British Rail
Passengers
2019/20	8.475 million
Interchange	2,938
2020/21	0.795 million
Interchange	445
2021/22	3.369 million
Interchange	1,479
2022/23	7.906 million
Interchange	2,583
2023/24	9.281 million
Interchange	2,109
Notes Passenger statistics from the Office of Rail and Road

Stansted Airport railway station is on a branch line off the West Anglia Main Line in the East of England and was opened in 1991 to provide a rail link to London Stansted Airport. It is 36 miles 67 chains (59.3 km) down the line from London Liverpool Street station, to which a frequent dedicated service called the Stansted Express operates.

The short branch line was constructed at a cost of £44 million and opened by British Rail to coincide with the completion of the airport's new terminal building.^[1] With over 9 million passengers from 2023-2024, it is the busiest station in Essex, the second busiest in the East of England, and the sixteenth busiest in the country outside of London.^[2]

Platforms 1 and 3 run the full length of the station and are used for Stansted Express and Norwich services. The shorter platform number 2 is used for the CrossCountry-operated services to Birmingham New Street.

In 2011 platform 1 was extended to accommodate two trains simultaneously in combinations of up to 16 coaches, and platform 2 was extended to accommodate four-coach trains.

The station is in a concrete box structure that is, unusually, above ground level rather than below ground, being constructed under the terminal building. This is evident at the western end of the platforms which are left open and is a similar design to Wembley Central railway station.

Currently ticket checks are completely manual for both arriving and departing passengers. This can lead to long queues and crowding, especially soon after an arrival of a terminating service. With the planned introduction of the contactless travel payment option pending, gated ticket barriers are expected to be installed.

Services at Stansted Airport are operated by Greater Anglia (including services under the Stansted Express brand) and CrossCountry.

The typical off-peak service in trains per hour (tph) is:^[3]

• 4 tph to London Liverpool Street via Tottenham Hale, of which:^[4]
  • 2 tph call at Bishop's Stortford
  • 2 tph call at Harlow Town, of which 1 also calls at Stansted Mountfitchet
• 1 tph to Norwich via Cambridge and Ely
• 1 tph to Birmingham New Street via Cambridge, Ely, Peterborough, Leicester and Nuneaton

Preceding station	National Rail			Following station
Stansted Mountfitchet, Bishop's Stortford or Harlow Town		Greater Anglia Stansted Express London Liverpool Street – Stansted Airport		Terminus
Audley End		Greater Anglia Norwich – Stansted Airport
Cambridge		CrossCountry Birmingham New Street – Stansted Airport

• Media related to Stansted Airport railway station at Wikimedia Commons

• Train times and station information for Stansted Airport railway station from National Rail
• Stansted Airport Trains

51°53′20″N 0°15′40″E / 51.889°N 0.261°E / 51.889; 0.261