The Beehive (JD Wetherspoon), Crawley

A reasonable airport Spoons, visible from the arrivals floor below but sufficiently out of the way to avoid being too busy and you can usually find a table. Not a vast range of ales but it did have a couple of festival beers on this occasion (from Exmoor and Wadworth) and in very good condition. I doubt you would come here unless you were at the airport, but it is a very handy place to wait for arrivals or for a quick pint before security.

In the South Terminal. Nice place, only three ales on tap. Doombar £4.25,Abbot £4.10 & guest ale, Dekota Red £3.90. Friendly staff. Clean and tidy. Not sure what else today, apart from I like it.

Located landside on the upper level of Gatwick's South Terminal, close to the where you now pass through security, this is a very basic Wetherspoons bar. Like many of their airport venues, it has an open plan layout, but is slightly more self contained than usual and doesn't seems to result in punters taking pints out to the seating areas beyond. An L-shaped servery is located to the left on entry and faces toward the rear of the pub. There is plenty of standard and high stool seating, with the space broken up a little by some high shelves with drinking ledges and stools which act as effective partitioning screens. Windows at the far end give you good views out to the excitement of the airport below although bagging a seat back here isn't particularly easy. The whole pub has a quite pleasing honeycomb motif throughout, notable in wall fittings, screens, windows etc... which gives the place a small bit of much needed character. It goes without saying that the usual airport annoyances apply - bags lying everywhere, long, complex orders for time consuming beverages, baffled foreign tourists, disinterested bar staff and so on. I'd hoped that the ale range might compensate slightly, but there were just the three ales on and a more unexciting Wetherspoons line-up I don't think I have ever seen - Fullers London Pride, Sharps Doom Bar and Adnams Broadside. I obviously went for the Broadside which was pretty average and at the un-Wetherspoons price of £3.80. This place was never going to set the pulse racing, but I thought the poor ale range and steep prices further depreciated any enjoyment I might have got from this visit. It works well as a meeting place or somewhere to people watch, but beyond that there's not much going for it and I would always use the airside Flying Horse when passing through.

A very sterile and boring airport bar with just 3 usual suspect real ales on. This place is just about ok if you are waiting to catch a plane and I would not make a point of coming here again.

I had to wait half an hour for a connecting train at Gatwick on a recent Saturday evening so I decided to pop into the airport and have a leisurely pint. Knowing that the Beehive is a Wetherspoons and with it being in an airport I certainly wasn’t expecting much. Therefore I was pleasantly surprised to find a relaxed and comfortably busy bar with polite staff. Standard draught products were available from the bar that also supports six hand pumps in two banks of three. The doubled up ale range was Fuller’s London pride, Adnams’ Broadside and Sharp’s Doom Bar. I went for a pint of Fosters which set me back £4.19, which I found quite surprising even with this place being in an airport. Food is available during the day, but don’t go expecting meal deals that one would find in a town centre Spoons. There was no background music and a TV was showing muted National lottery Live. Another couple of screens were showing aircraft departures and arrivals. I would have no problem returning for another pint.