How many hours before my flght should I get to the airport.

[nans vacation]

I am flying from Heathrow airport to Venice on May 4th,on a Sunday, on British airways. To get to the airport I would like to take the Heathrow express train from Paddington, but the earliest train leaves at 6:25am, it will get to Heathrow airport about 6:55am. That is only 2 hours before the plane takes off. Will that be enough time to catch the plane????

 

If I need more time to get to the airport, what other options do I have?

taxi:confused:

Thank you everyone for your help.

[CruiserBruce]

2 hours will be fine. 90 minutes will be fine. Generally not too comfortable with much less than 75 minutes prior.

[insidecabin]

I think the Venice flight tend to go from stands in T5-A at the north end(A1-A12), so in the main terminal building not the ones you have to take the transfer transport too(B,C).

 

http://www.heathrowairport.com/static/Heathrow/Downloads/PDF/Heathrow_T5_Map.pdf

T5 is very long and some areas of bag drop get busy while other bits are empty.

 

Also they have 2 security queues and IME the north one gets more busy than the south one, check the big signs which have a hint of the queue size.

 

They now seem to hold off gate assignments till around 45mins before departure(I guess to keep you in the shops/bars).

 

for bagdrop+security+get to gate - 2hrs should be plenty

[John Bull]

Airport websites & travel agents tend to err on the cautious side. They usually suggest a minimum three hours for inter-continental & two hours for European.

But I think the minimum check-in time for BA to Europe is well under an hour - check out their website.

 

For two people, a private transfer wouldn't cost a great deal more than Heathrow Express, especially if you have to factor in a taxi to the HEX terminus at Paddington station.

If you opt for a private transfer, best bet is to ask the hotel to fix it. Might cost a shade more but puts the onus on the hotel to resolve if the car doesn't arrive on time.

A taxi hailed in the street would cost a lot more.

HEX takes only 15 mins, at that time in the morning a car would take 30 to 35 mins from the Paddington area.

 

JB :)

[SixOneTwo]

Don't cut it close. Here is a post I made about our experience at Heathrow. You can just never be too cautious about how much time you'll need, as many times, your experience is out of your control. I'm not faulting anything that happened, just making people aware.

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?p=40634194#post40634194

 

P.S. We've been to Heathrow before and this DIDN'T happen.

Edited January 28, 2014 by SixOneTwo

[Cotswold Eagle]

I'm sorry for your woes, but I'm not sure how relevant your experience of a transatlantic out of T4 is to someone considering an early Sunday morning European flight out of T5, to be honest. Whole different kettle of fish.

[roaming_kiwi58]

We catch an early morning flight out of T5 at Heathrow on all of our annual trips to Europe. For the last few years we have taken to staying at the Sofitel Hotel adjacent to T5 the night before. From there it is just a 10 minute walk into the terminal. Much less stressful than wondering whether the transport is going to be on time! We get a good rate if we book it 6 months out. We would normally checkin about 2 hours before for European flights. Sometimes our flights have actually been too early to use the train from central London anyway, and we would not use taxis in London. As we get older we try for the more relaxed options if we can! We find T5 less hassled than T3, which we also use every trip.

[Scriv]

nans vacation, i would also recommend staying in an airport hotel the night before rather than chancing it on the Sunday morning. I believe that is also a Bank Holiday?

 

There are often engineering works on Sundays and weekends and Bank Holidays and so train times are often rescheduled or they use a bus for parts of the journey.

 

Sorry to be a doom merchant, but you only need a very slight re-timetabling or delay to make that tight connection very stressful or even risk being too late.

 

IMHO I think it would be much better getting to your airport hotel the evening before, having a good night's sleep and breakfast and then getting to the airport in ample time without any risk.

Edited February 4, 2014 by Scriv