We will be arriving in London at Heathrow Airport. What is the best way to get to Southampton
from there?

National Express Buses no doubt - https://www.nationalexpress.com/en/airports/heathrow

Little over 2 hours direct from Heathrow bus stations.

If you are taking a cruise, use the cruise line's transfer. Otherwise take the national express coach.

As I live near Southampton, I do this trip not infrequently, and I agree with both of the above posters about National Express. If you have a large amount of luggage or there are more than two travelling, it may be worth looking into a pre-booked car/van transfer.

The obvious alternative is the coach-rail transfer via Woking, but I've always found it significantly more expensive than National Express.

Q National Express Bus experts - can you or do you need to reserve those buses to be guaranteed a seat? Reservations for exact bus of course hard to do coordinating with landing. Thanks in advance.

This is from their website:

"We strongly recommend booking a coach which departs a minimum of 1 hour 30 minutes after you are due to land which will enable you to clear passport control and collect any luggage and make your way to our departure point. If your flight is delayed, you should aim to make contact with our staff before the time of departure on your ticket to request an amendment.

Flexible and Standard tickets can only be amended before the time of departure and will be subject to an amendment fee(depending on ticket type), excess fare (where applicable) and seat availability.

For added flexibility you might consider an open return ticket which will allow you to be booked onto the next available service by our staff, without fees and valid for 3 months from the original date of departure.

Alternatively, a flexible add-on is available from the 'add extras' page when making your booking online which means that you can

• board any available coach 12 hours before or 12 hours after your original departure time
• Amend your ticket to a new departure date - free of charge
• obtain a refund on your ticket, when cancelled up to 24 hours before departure"

The fully flexible fare is significantly more expensive. For an example I chose at random, Heathrow to Bath, the cheapest fare was £15, the Flexible £35.

Thanks willit- sounds like to guarantee a seat you should book ahead and to get cheapest fare leave plenty of fudge factor time in - Heathrow terminals have all kind of stores and eateries - even with a fully flexible ticket the site above says no guarantee of getting a seat - so it seems one should pay the cheapest fare and pad time a couple of hours and then if miss buy full fare ticket once landed - if seats are available you would get on - if not even the fully-flexible 35 quid ticket would not get you a seat either it seems.

I may be completely mistaken about this, but I am sure that this is a change, and that previously, if your plane was delayed, they would allow you on the next available bus providing there was space.
" If your flight is delayed, you should aim to make contact with our staff before the time of departure on your ticket to request an amendment. "

The idea that you need to contact them before the scheduled departure time, when you are probably still in midair unable to communicate, seems a little harsh.

Overall, I've always found National Express to be very good, and they are my preferred method of getting to Heathrow.

An alternative is to book a later National Express departure than the one you want to take, and then ask the staff if you can travel on an earlier one. Assuming that this is a non-stop journey, and that no-one will have a ticket from a later stop, they may agree to take you if there is space.