A traveller arriving for the first time at London City Airport, jaundiced by past experience at Heathrow and further disaffected by reports of the Terminal Five debacle, might feel a nagging sense of unreality.

There are no long walks down seemingly interminable corridors and no huge queues at immigration. On a good day, the time lost between unbuckling your seatbelt and boarding the Docklands Light Railway can be as little as 15 minutes. Even with checked bags to collect, it should be no more than a half hour.