Hi,
My husband and I will be departing Heathrow Airport at 4:30pm on Saturday, May 1st. We are coming from Amterdam. We are looking into our options by either taking several trains from Amsterdam to London to Heathrow...or maybe a direct flight to our terminal. It says on the Heathrow website that American Airlines is Terminal 3. We are on a budget, but also not spend too many hours wasted changing trains.

Any suggestions?

There are no flights from Amsterdam to T3. Whether you take BA to T5, bmi to T1 or KLM to T4, you ought to be able to get your bags through-checked: allow about an hour for the AMS-LHR flight, and another hour from arrival to geting the bus to your connecting terminal, going through security and geting to your gate.

A train needs about 8 hours from Amsterdam station to checkin at Heathrow. Change at Brussels, then at London St Pancras it's an hour by tube to T3.

Whichever option you choose (personally I think it's a no brainer), allow lots of insurance time.

No brainer would be returning to London the previous day and staying overnight.

What happens if your flight or train is cancelled or delayed. Are you prepared to pay for a full cost one way ticket home.

If you do insist on flying on the day then you have to get the first flight of the day so that if things do go wrong then you can make other plans - even if it's buying a last minute ticket

BTW BMI flights from AMS-LHR stop at the end of the month so it's only a choice of KLM or BA

Hi Alanrow,
Yes, we have made the decision to come back to London the night before we leave. Do you know how we can get from Amsterdam to London then? a flight? a plane? I would hate to have to backtrack and go through Brussels... Which do you think is more cost efficiant and easy?

thanks,
Courtney

Train to Brussels, Eurostar to London. None of this faffing around at airports getting ritually humiliated

http://seat61.com/Netherlands.htm#by Eurostar

You could of course take the overnight ferry to Harwich then train from there

http://seat61.com/Netherlands.htm#train+ferry

ALan, the OP says they don't want to waste many hours changing trains, yet you recommend an 8 hour train journey involving two changes in different cities? Sorry, but a much shorter journey (involving a 45 minute flight from AMS - one of the most organised airport in Europe) is easily the fastest and least stressful option here.

Leaving on April 30th could be a challenge, given that it is Koninginnedag (Queens Day) and the trains may stop running early. Even those to Schiphol.

Fly BA to Heathrow early on May 1st and they will almost certainly check your bags through. KLM may or may not be prepared/able to so so. Allow lots of time at Heathrow for transfers etc.

Hi we have decided to take the ferry and have extended our trip by two days.