I walked along the south bank of the Thames from Woolwich as far as North Greenwich.  Once I got to the area around the O2 arena, I wanted to get back across to the Excel center and the easiest route was to take the gondola across the river.  This was the Emirates Air Line.  It still had a bunch of branding for this but apparently the name was changed in June of 2022.  I was able to use my Oyster to pay for it although it didn’t seem as cheap as other forms of travel that TfL provides!  I could see the system from long before the time I got to Greenwich since it is obvious as you look upriver.

There was virtually no one using the crossing when I was there.  I just wandered into the terminal after having spent some time down on the riverbank watching the gondolas passing overhead.  I stepped straight into my own car and was never troubled by the possibility of sharing space.  This made it easy for me to bounce around taking photos of whatever caught my eye.

The crossing only takes a few minutes.  You do get a good view of things as you go.  The O2 is a lot easier to see from the air than from the ground so that is great.  Coming across the river, I was able to look down on the various construction projects underway on the north bank of the Thames.    The Excel center is the largest thing to see as you head north but there are lots of surrounding structures around the docks as you descend into the other terminal.  The view of LCY is good to and, if only a departing flight had been coming out, I would have got an interesting shot.

I have no idea how useful the crossing is.  It certainly wasn’t busy when I used it, but I was not there at what would be considered peak time.  Even so, it still seemed to be a bit of an oddity in a city where public transportation gets heavy usage.  Emirates has obviously discontinued sponsorship, but that decision might have come during the pandemic when airlines were hardly flush with cash.  Who knows.  It was still quite fun to use, though.