Heathrow Express- Price not as advertised?

Hmm. I just tried and ran into the same issue. I perused the fare types and the deta8ls no longer indicate 90 days for the £5.50 fare. I wonder if they are increasing it to 120 days out. Hopefully it’s just a system glitch. Maybe contact them via the web form?

https://www.heathrowexpress.com/contact-form#/

The 5.50 Book Early tickets have to be 90 days out AND there is limited availability of them, per the website. I can dummy book the 5.50 price for October no problem. I tried numerous May, June and July dates with no luck. But I only tried about 5 so there may be some availability.

I bought tickets for late May and then again for mid-June about 3 weeks ago and was able to get the 5.50 price. I’m not sure how long after my purchase they sold out at the Book Early price.

The Elizabeth Line is just turn up and go, no advance booking needed, or even possible- trains every 15 minutes from T 2 and 3 (basically Heathrow Central) starting alternately from T4 and T5.

Just over 30 minutes to Paddington, then extends through Central London, and out to Canary Wharf and beyond. From May

This is the timetable-

https://content.tfl.gov.uk/elizabeth-line-december-2022.pdf

The fare on Elizabeth Line is £12.80, but there is a £14.10 day cap on fares from zone 6, so any 2nd journey that day costs just £1.30 then all further journeys are "free". With a railcard the cap is £14.10 peak, £9.30 off peak, so off peak any further journeys after the Elizabeth line from the airport are "free".

From the 20 May timetable change the Elizabeth Line services to Heathrow will include some limited stop ones which will result in the fastest service being 10 minutes slower than the Heathrow Express to Paddington with its additional benefit of penetrating further into central London direct

London vacation at the end of May and were going to use the Heathrow Express. The HE website indicates the fare is 5.50 when ticket are purchased at least 90 days out. Well our date is beyond 90 days and the fare is showing 16.50!

The end of May has the Late May Bank Holiday when zillions of Brits head overseas or elsewhere such as staycations. I would suggest that demand has reduced the number cheap tickets.

The 5.50 Book Early tickets have to be 90 days out AND there is
limited availability of them, per the website.

@Valerie - thanks for pointing this out. I've bought HEX tickets online but hadn't read the website content closely enough to note the limited availability. Fortunately, I bought my Paddington --> LHR ticket for 6 June at £5.50 (I did that on 17 Dec). I just checked, and although I can still find that price for 6 June, it isn't, as noted above, available for any day of the prior week - i.e., the week that begins with the bank holiday weekend. (BTW I can stroll to Paddington from my hotel, so the HEX to LHR at £5.50 is a sweet deal indeed.)

The other amazing thing I found out this morning is that a Railcard can be used on the £5.50 fare, to bring it down to £3.65. I never knew that, and don't think it used to be true. I wonder if that is because of the new competition.
The reason I am biased against HEX is because of their extortionate walk up fares, but £3.65 is very good if you can book that far ahead.

Rrharri...are you sure the HE is the best way into London depending on your final destination or are you just taking it because there are some people on this board who act as if it is the greatest thing since sliced bread?

Isn't the rule of thumb there are 3 trains out of Heathrow, the HEX the Elizabeth Line and the Piccadilly Line. Compare and contrast as they say, when I was on Piccadilly recently there were a LOT of locals with suitcases headed to LHR.

The thing is to do what works best for you. Sometimes price means more than time; other times vice versa. I suspect many locals use the Tube since they already have an Oyster card so that would be both convenient and inexpensive.

Our hotel is one Tube stop from Paddington, so with an early purchase through the Heathrow Express app (and thanks isn31c, I didn't know I could use a railcard either until you mentioned it), we now have tickets for $8.54 for the two of us from Heathrow to London, and a short hop on the Tube to get the rest of the way. If we had taken the Piccadilly line, we would have had to change at Earls Court, so we're arriving more quickly for basically the same cost.

Thank you to all for the informative responses. We were looking for the best price and convenience to get into London, we will probably use the Elizabeth Line.

I did send a query to HE which might be answered in 20 days if I'm lucky.

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Leslie - the vast majority of Londoners don’t use Oyster cards now as it’s very much yesterday’s technology.
It seems like you have both got an excellent deal and that your destination is indeed close to Paddington. But for the majority of people who pay a lot more for the HEX and/or don’t really want to be in Paddington it makes little sense, even less now the Elizabeth line is also there.

Thanks Johnew52. I guess what I was aiming for is that if you regularly use the Tube, then the Tube is the easiest option. My reply was meant to show that for some people the Express makes sense, and that for others it doesn't, so each person should choose what works for them. For those who are transit-phobic, or transit-inexperienced (so to speak), that might mean a car service meeting them at the airport and taking them to their hotel where they can recover from jet lag and adjust to the city. When we were pinching our pennies (or rather pence!) that meant the long ride on the Piccadilly line when we arrived, but the HE when we left because I'm rather neurotic about being at the airport early and we had many Tube trains "terminated" short of our destination when we were in London in 2004.

Good luck with your message rrharri--may you get an answer sooner than you expect!

Here is the response from HE:

Thank you for contacting Heathrow Express.
According to our changes on advanced tickets, the £5.50 price is for bookings made 5 months before the travel takes place.
As for the last week of May now, this will be a £16.50 charge per ticket.
Thank you again for contacting Heathrow Express and I hope this helps.

It looks as though there was a change without updating the website.

We have plenty of alternatives, thank you all.

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it is still the Bank Holiday