J D Wetherspoons 'The Flying Horse Bar'

My first port of call when travelling from Gatwick South, service is always prompt and never had a problem of finding a table (helps that normally travel around 7am so in at about 5am).

Never eaten in here (as always get in-flight meal to break flight up) so can't comment on food, but drinks are ok in price, no complaints from me on the beer and others in party say the coffee and hot chocolates pass the taste test.

Looks and feel busy, but we found a good table with available power outlet which was great. Service was decent and delivery within what could be expected. Ordered the large breakfast with orange juice and coffee. The food did not taste very good and was almost cold. The "freshly squeezed" orange juice did not taste "freshly squeezed" at all, and the coffee was abysmal, like instant coffee with lots of water in it. All in all not a place I would like to visit again anytime soon. One star for the service and the fact that I could charge my phone.

Hidden above the arrivals area in the South Terminal this place is good if you are waiting for someone to arrive and you have time to kill. Or you are staying in the Yotel and need dinner or breakfast.

Like any Wetherspoons it's cheap and OK. Doesn't try and be fancy, the menu is the same as everywhere else, plus the beer is slightly within sell-by date but who cares. 

Well me and my girlfriend went here for a breakfast and to be honest i thought cause its in an airport it would of been expensive but it was actually decently priced. The food was great for 4 am in the morning and the service was great too. Defiantly will go back on my next holiday :)

Dropped a friend off to catch a flight so we decided to have a look in…..not really impressed. Not up to the standard when we used whilst doing some work on the Hilton back in 86’. BUT nothing lasts forever. Didn’t think much of the menu…have been in better “Spoons”!! Personally, I think Spoons menu has deteriorated over the years. The selection of ales are ok…..if you’re not driving!!!

Not up to jd weatherspoons usual food quality. They are either cutting costs, or time. Burger was no better than you would get a the golden arches.

Good selection of beers though.

I go through Gatwick south about once a month due to buissness and always pop in to the wetherspoons (flying horse) for a quick meal and drink. It always seems very busy but yet i have never waited more than 10 mins for a meal which is cool. I am a massive real ale fan so going to an airport and getting a brilliant range to choose from is a massive plus for me. On a quite personal note like i said above i go in there once a month and now at least 3 members of the staff know my first name which i think for the amount of faces they must see everyday is pritty impressive.

Great atmosphere, a range of ales to choose from, good food and a great idea to have an area at the back ideal for stag and hen parties! Meant our meal wasn't disturbed by the groups enjoying themselves

I pass through Gatwick weekly. On occasion, I eat breakfast at the 'Village Inn' there, although the ridiculous prices which the monopolies there charge mitigate against this option. However, the Wetherspoons bar seems to offer a better service than the others - and having used 'Burger King' the other week, I've now vowed never to darken their doors again.
Unfortunately, there is a virus at Gatwick which attacks toast-making machines, and against which modern hygeine technology has yet to find an answer. The machines are out of action for weeks on end - and how the staff do tut about it when complained to! I understand that the manageress of this bar, one Corrinne Berry, has attempted to address the issue, but over the past year or so has signally failed. Perhaps 'management' and 'toast' are incompatible bedfellows; perhaps 'management' needs to understand that 'toast' is a necessary part of any breakfoast for which I pay a grossly inappropriate sum, and perhaps 'management' should understand that 'hash browns' are a foreign fatty obscenity which have no place in any 'traditional breakfast'...
Draw breath.

I liked this branch, in spite of there being no integral toilets - you’re asked to go to the airport toilets next door. They are next door, so not too much of a problem.

I must have been at a quiet time, because I was served very quickly.

One of the best things for me about the place is that although that upper shopping mall can feel quite claustrophobic, if you keep going towards the back of this Wetherspoon’s you come to a whole wall thats floor to ceiling windows. Its great - and it has a partial view of the planes. I sat facing it with my pot of tea, in a quiet booth, and all was well with the world.

I suppose the only problem I experienced, which is more typical of airport bars than of this Wetherspoon’s, is that the bar was clogged by solo drinkers, its quite difficult sometimes to wade through them to get to the bar temporarily. What that aspect is like at busy times hardly bears thinking about.

It’s not too shabby for a branch of Wetherspoons - it’s usually very busy, with the large volume of traffic the airport gets, but for the location, the prices of food and drink are reasonable, if slightly more expensive than the usual prices of J D Wetherspoons.

You’ll find a variety of pub food, and the usual beers here.

If that doesn’t take your fancy, there’s always the mcdonalds next door :)

Wetherspoon branches at airports are considerably more costly than there pubs outside airports. However the price does to put off the passengers, and they are still the cheapest at Gatwick airport for both food and drink. The size of the pub is rather small for an airport, and from experience gets rather crowded most of the time. The variety of drinks could be improved as the choice is more limited than what youd expect in other wetherspoon pubs. The price is rather high when compared to what wetherspoon is famous for, so maybe they should rebrand?
The customer service is average, and the staff want to serve you and then get onto the next but when there are little amounts of staff, and numbers of customers maybe they should employ more staff.

great place to eat. cheap yet great food. even cheaper than macd’s! can get busy so you may not always get a place to eat and the service can be a bit slow but is usually fine. i recommend their chicken sandwhich = yummy!

OK, it’s in an airport lounge, so it’s not a traditional or historic pub, and it’s always going to be busy.

But they do a good range of real ales, so you have something decent to drink while you are waiting for your flight. My only quibble would be that their 'cellar temperature’ chiller works a bit too efficiently for my liking, so the beer is too cold.

If you have longer to wait, they also do cooked food, which is good value, if not very exciting. They have plenty of staff, so it doesn’t normally take too long to get served. If you want to eat, check how long the wait is: nothing more frustrating than ordering and then seeing that your flight is 'boarding’!

Gatwick Airport is in the process of extending the passenger area in the South terminal, and not before time. This should double the amount of seating for passengers, and as part of the refurbishment they are adding a new set of food and drink outlets.

One of these (opened on 19 May 2008) is a J D Wetherspoon bar, unusually given the name ‘The Flying Horse’ (as if we wouldn’t notice the fact that it was in an airport terminal). To be fair, they have clearly spent a lot of money and effort on the décor, although the design seems rather muddled, as if they couldn’t quite decide what period to aim for: Old aviation prints, traditional pub furniture and areas of patterned carpet try to give it the feel of a ‘real’ pub; but the frontage has a wild art-nouveau screen, and the central section a sleeker modern look (leather-clad pillars, anyone?). Still, the finishes all look high quality, and it has a very long serving counter. The whole place is a also bit Tardis-like, as it goes back a long way.

The plus points are the things that Wetherspoons does well: four real ales on hand-pump, including Marston’s Empire; a fairly long menu of good-value, modern pub-type grub (lots of chips but curries, paninis and wraps, too); and the drink prices are a marvel for an airport – the beers are around £2.50 a pint, which is less than most London venues these days. Service was patchy as, despite large numbers of bar staff, the even larger number of customers arriving in groups occasionally overwhelmed them. But at least there were plenty of bar staff around.

The negative points are largely to do with the British capacity to immediately reduce the nicest of new venues to tawdriness. The key here is not having enough staff to clear/wipe tables and generally clean up, coupled with customers’ propensity to drop cups, serviettes, food and just about everything else on the floor. It was looking distinctly messy despite having been open only a few months. I hope they tackle this aspect quickly, in which case it will be a tolerably good venue.