Passengers flying into Gatwick airport were in a state of panic after an attention seeking youtube prankster / click baiter made letters saying “welcome to Luton” on the grass near Gatwick airport! Air passengers flying into Gatwick were left thinking that they have been diverted to London Luton Airport”. It was even reported in the Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph, etc.
This is driving the internet crazy, this kinda gotcha gag. This viral news story has attracted all the best and worst types of attention. When the youtube prankster was flying into London a few months ago, he remembered that there was a guy in America who had written “welcome to Cleveland” on his house roof in Milwaukee, and it’s been there for the last 34 years! They asked why’d you do it, and he simply said it was Wednesday.
The UK attention seeker wanted to do his own version in the UK in order to garner extra views on his youtube channel. He needed to find a location in London which turned out to be harder than he thought. He was also worried there was going to be a backlash.
He had to sit on the phone for weeks targeting every house, business, equestrian center around Heathrow and Gatwick, but he realized
pretty quickly that heathrow was never going to work with the planes flying in over central London, when they’re coming in to land, and he wasn’t going to find land big enough for what he wanted to do, so that left him with Gatwick/.
He did a bit of investigative journalism on flight radar, which showed that 75% of the landings came from the East of the airport, so this
patch of land was his target, and after weeks of calling, he was invited for a site visit by Rosie, to talk about some space she has out there. He got a high vis jacket on and had a look at the site, which was perfect.
The runway was only a few hundred yards away from the 80 meter long blank canvas of land. He wanted the passengers to think genuinely for half a second that they have actually landed in the wrong place! So he was thinking of things like welcome to New York, Dublin or welcome to Edinburgh, but did not think it was that believable.
The idea thus became where else could it be. Heathrow airport, London City airport, Stansted airport or London Luton airport. Luton would be quite funny because there is a reputation about Luton, that cannot be confirmed or denied, but it’s considered to be the last choice of the London airports, mainly because it’s not really in London. London Luton airport is, according to Google anyway, the worst rated
London airport. There is thus data to back up this stereotype about Luton.
He hired Angus the artist, who ordered a literal ton of tarpaulin and for two weeks Angus was cutting and crafting until the day of the
installation. The first step was laying out the gigantic three by eight meter letters, like a giant birthday card, with writing in massive
letters saying “Welcome to Luton”. Will they be able to see it is the big question. The landowners agreed that the sign would be up for six weeks, so the sign had to be properly installed, which meant painstakingly hammering a peg into each individual ringlet, all 382 of them.
The whole exercise wasn’t cheap. All in all, the land, the sign, and the installation cost the prankster over four thousand Pounds! Once the sign was complete he still had no idea what it looked like from the air, so the very next morning he took a flight from London Heathrow to London Gatwick airport, but it had to be via Amsterdam! After boarded the flight in Amsterdam, he took a seat on the left-hand side of the plane. The pilot then came over the intercom to make the announcement: “good morning ladies and gentlemen, welcome to your flight from Amsterdam to London.”
The flight wasn’t particularly packed and there weren’t a huge amount of people to see the sign, but as we approached Gatwick airport there she was in all her glory. The woman in the seat behind him was a bit confused, so it was definitely visible from the plane, you could see it
100″
It appeared people on his flight really looked at it, so he was concerned he did it all for nothing, but he decided to just wait and see if anyone he knew posted about it. Then the tweets started popping off and before long it was on 1,000 likes. One tweet said passengers flying into
Gatwick were in a state of panic when they looked out of their windows, to see the words “welcome to Luton” after someone in spelt out the words “welcome to Luton” in their garden at Gatwick airport.
Practical jokes and pranks are always cruel but the prankster claims it can be quite entertaining. It became the most viewed news story on
the entirety of the BBC and he even got a message saying it was on the news in Portugal.
