Gatwick to Heathrow
 

Hello all! We will be flying from the States into Gatwick on BA but need to get to Heathrow quickly to continue on another flight to Frankfurt. We will be staying in London on the way back, however since this is our first time in London, I need your help to know the best way to get between the 2 airports. Thanks

Toffiefl - the time of day, whether it's a weekday or weekend and how much time you have between your flights really determines whether you can likely make it and if so, the best way for you to do this.

It's probably not going to happen quickly. Most would recommend leaving at least 5 hours between flights, if all goes well. If there is any delay, 5 hours might not be enough.

NationalExpress.com has shuttle buses between the two airports.

Wow! 5 hours! That shows me how ignorant I am about this. We arrive at Gatwick on Friday at 7:15 a.m. and our continuing flight from Heathrow leaves at 11:55 a.m.

I do the transfer quite often.Its very simple. Once you clear immigrations and customs in Gatwick you walk directly right out the doors and its right in front of you. It is called the speedlink coach. but may called national express now. It is what is called a luxury coach or bus!!!! That basically means that after a long flight you can buy coffee, tea and little snacks onboard. There are seats around small tables or as normal, side by side. There is a bathroom onboard as well. You must have at least 3 hours to do the transfer based on the time you actually arrive in Gatwick, ie, if you arrive say at 7am, you cannot take a connecting flight before 10am.
This costs in the area of 17-20 English pounds, and the actual ride is about 1 to 1:30 hours. It usually is about one hour. It leaves from both the north and south terminals in Gatwick and goes to all the terminals in Heathrow, starting with terminal 4. There are free baggage carts at both terminals . Hope this helps.

Yes, it helps tremendously. The instructions couldn't be clearer. Thank you!

For getting off an international flight at Gatwick, you have to wait until the plane actually arrives at the gate, then you have to go through the customs line, then you pick up your luggage (I hope I'm remembering this all correctly). You can have a delay going through the customs line, and a delay picking up your luggage, and you could conceivably have a delay on the motorway. Then once you arrive at Heathrow, you should check in at least 2 hours before your flight to Frankfurt.

That's why I recommend 5 hours.

parislady explained it very well - I would never try this with less than 4 hours but you might have as much as 4.5 hours so most likely you will be fine. You are arriving in the early a.m. when flights are more often on time (later in the day as there is more and more air traffic the chances for on-time arrival decrease)

But things CAN go wrong -- late arrival, your plane having to wait for a gate, delays at luggage, terrible traffic on the M25, long lines at LHR. Any/all of these might delay you too much. The worst that will happen though is you'll end up on a later flight to Frankfurt -

In my case since I usually have the cheapest possible nonrefundable tickets, the worst that could happen is that I had to pay for another expensive full-fare walkup ticket. Who knows what that would be in my case - I wouldn't be surprised at 100 pounds x 2 (for 2 people) in many cases. So that keeps my planning of airport connections very conservative.

You never said if it's the same airline you are connecting to? If so you will be protected as long as the original ticketed connection is <i>legal</i>, and I believe it's 3 hours for the 2 airports, although I will agree, 3 hours is somewhat tight.
With almost 5 hours, you'll be fine!

Have a great trip!

I wanted to say, either the same airline or it could be 2 different airlines as long as it's the same ticket. You could have problems if you were flying on 2 seperate tickets and you missed your connection.

All the info. on the airport transfers
can be found at http://www.londontoolkit.com/travelh...k_transfer.htm

You've got all the info from MmeParis,
but you might want a printout.

Thanks to all of you for your help. Yes it is the same airline, British Airways that we'll be traveling on for both segments. I appreciate everyone taking the time to answer!

Just out of curiosity, do BA only fly to Gatwick from wherever in the US you're coming from? I assume the answer must be &quot;yes&quot; or they wouldn't have put you on this route.

I just think any transfer between airports in London is a pain (and often a time-consuming expense) and should be avoided where possible. I know it's not always possible to avoid it, I guess I'm just glad I don't ever have to do it.

Dave; We are flying from Tampa, Florida to London and the only gateway available from BA is into Gatwick from here. We were very worried about the inconvenience of having to get from one airport to the other, especially since BA said we were on our own to do it. However with the help I've received from all of you we should have no problems now.

I'm sure you will be absolutely fine. I see why they have done it like that. BA do fly from Gatwick to Franfurt but it seems like the flight times from Gatwick are 7.45am and 3.35pm, neither which would be much good to you. Hence the trek from Gatwick to Heathrow to pick up one of the intermediate flights.

As I said before, You'll be fine!!!

The bus schedules show that the runs between the airports take anywhere from 1 hour to 1.5 hours depending on the time of the day. The busses do this route about 40 times a day, every day. There is a reason why schedules are printed, because 99% of the time they are met.
Some of the pessimistic predictions about possible 2-3 hours for the drive, are just that, a very pessimistic outlook on what happens on a regular average day. If we all started to look at the worst case scenarios, then why don't we book 5 hour connections at ORD, DFW or? After all the first plane could be really late?
These busses run this route daily, multiple times and they do it as advertised. That 1% misshap statistic is my prediction, and that's the worst case scenario. Maybe out of that 1% half actually are only 1/2 hour late, and the real misshaps happen about .01% of the time. The ones that take 3-4 hours longer because of some major accident on the expressway, a broken down bus, etc. If it happens, it does mess up your day, but to plan everything around that tiny possibility, is ridiculous. Anyone that travels on a very regular basis learns very quickly to trust the schedules and to use the schedules to their own advantage. The once a year traveler may not have a problem with sitting at the airports for 2-5 hours just to be safe, but for anybody that's at the airports every week, anything over an hour becomes unreasonble. Personally I have no problems with booking less than 1 hour connection even at the busiest airports, and few times I hoped it would work to my advantage and I missed the last connection and get some compensation, but dam* if it hardly EVER works that way. I just flew cross country between 2 of the worst on time airports, MIA-LAX with 35 minute connection at LAX for my continuing flight. This was a receipe for a disaster, because even something as simple as head winds on such a long flight could delay the flight by as long as 30-60 minutes regardless if the plane took off on time. That particular flight has a record of about 60% on-time performance, and the connecting flight in LAX was the last of the day for what I needed. I had the extra time in case I needed it and I was really hoping that something would go wrong, but Noooooooo, actually I had time to have a drink at LAX and make couple of phone calls before boarding my next flight.

<b>Folks, trust the schedules! </b>

I'm doing a Heathrow to Luton transfer and was worried too, but it sounds like we'll both have plenty of time.

Speaking with National Express, they suggested getting an advance ticket from their web site. I couldn't decide between two departure times (since we don't know how long baggage &amp; customs will take). National suggested getting a ticket for the later of the two. If we clear customs quickly they'll put us on standby for the earlier bus. If we buy for the earlier and miss it, they don't have to honor (or honour!) the ticket.

We're also considering just getting a ticket at the National counter at the airport, but we'd prefer to have a reservation in place.

Alan,

If it makes you feel more comfortable, by all means, pre-purchase, but speaking from multiple experiences, these busses are never full.

Also, remember that e-tickets do not have these options available. If you miss your bus with e-ticket, you're out of luck. This is from their site:

<b>However, at airports we do try to help as much as we can. Under normal circumstances we will try to accommodate you on a later departure subject to seats being available. But we are under no obligation to do this and such a gesture is not available for e-Ticket customers (Click here for e-Ticket terms &amp; conditions). Our advice when booking is always to book on a service slightly later. Then, if your plane arrives on time or early, &amp; you are in time to catch an earlier coach we will be happy for you to travel on an earlier departure subject, always, to seats being available. Please note that our standard amendment fee on domestic bookings of &pound;1.50 per ticket may be charged by the agent/office making the amendment at their discretion.

Please Note: we do not recommend that customers use the e-Ticket option when their travel details are likely to change due to factors beyond their control. If you believe this to be the case you should where possible either arrange delivery of the tickets by post or collect the tickets.</b>

AAFrequentFlyer, if the connections are all on one ticket, no need to go beyond the legal connection time, since passengers will be protected. The 5-hour advice is based on two separate nonrefundable, nonchangeable tickets, which is what I typically use. I would have similar advice for other airports, because the cost (in my case) is so great for failing to meet the connection.