How & When to go to LHR from Premier Inn County Hall

Given that you want to be at LHR by about 7am, so leaving the hotel at c6am and heading out rather than into town I see no problem with commuters at all. If you can manage the walk with your luggage just walk across Westminster Bridge to a District line tube west to Hammersmith and change to the Piccadilly line to LHR. The change is simplicity itself - a cross platform change of about 20 steps.

I believe Delta uses T3, so you could opt to check into a hotel there late on Wednesday evening. I am a slug in the mornings, so would usually opt for any chance to stay in bed an extra hour. The Hilton Garden Inn is a short walk to the check in counters.

Or you could plan on a 45-60 minute travel time, leaving County Hall at 0600 hrs. Less expensive would be the Northern line from Waterloo to Tottenham Court Rd, then the Elizabeth line to LHR. More expensive would be taking the Bakerloo from Waterloo to Paddington, then the HEX to LHR. Most expensive, but easiest, would be an Uber or Bolt.

The Heathrow Express will be more expensive than the Elizabeth Line Route.

The Elizabeth Line will be £15.50, the Heathrow Express will be £13.10 if you get one of the £10 Advance Tickets (+£3.10 on the Tube)- which are available now for 6 August.

I’m sure you’ll more than likely get a number of suggestions. Find out which terminal you will be departing from at LHR.

If it were me, I’d stroll over to Waterloo Station and….

1.) Take the Northern Line or Jubilee Line to Tottenham Court Road, exit and board the Elizabeth Line to Heathrow.

OR

2.) From Waterloo Station take the Bakerloo Line
and having pre purchased ( as in today or this weekend a ticket for the Heathrow Express ) to Paddington Station. Exit and take the HEX to the airport. You could also board the Elizabeth Line there as well. It’s a bit longer ride than the 15 minute HEX.

From experience commuter hours are generally over by 9:30am.

I’d be at Heathrow no later than 8:30am but that’s just me. Always early where ever I fly.

Do you mind me asking why you want to be at Heathrow four hours before your flight?

We'll fly from LHR to Atlanta. We figure being at the airport 4 hours early would avoid any potential aggravation going through security. (Traumatized by the recent TSA slowdown in the US.) Do you think 4 hours early is too much? Would 3.5 hours be sufficient (with carry-on bags only)?

Thank you to everyone who recommended routes. I'll look into each of these! 😀

LHR website recommends arriving 3 hours before a flight to the US. That includes people who need to go through the check in lines for boarding passes and baggage drop. If you dont need to do either of those things, then I can't see any reason to arrive earlier than that. England is not the US.

I'm one of those low-risk people, and if it were me, I would spend the night at an airport hotel so you don't have to deal with getting there in the morning and relying on public transportation. Also, you'll get more sleep. I just figure that anything can go wrong. Trains can be stuck, there could be a breakdown in the system, and anything at all might happen. Why push it?

You can have dinner in the city, then leisurely make your way to the airport hotel and have a nice relaxing sleep. Then get up at 6:30, have time for breakfast at the hotel, and wander over to the airport around 8:00 AM. You do not need to be there any earlier than 3 hours before your flight.

Unlike a lot of big-city airports, Heathrow has a few hotels that will probably be less expensive than the Premier Inn County Hall. I use the Premier Inn at T4 (the first inexpensive, on-airport hotel my research uncovered back in 2017), but I think there may be a few other options in a similar price range. Just know the difference between a hotel from which you can walk to your departure terminal, a hotel from which you can take the Underground (without charge) to your departure terminal (probably the T4 PI in your case) and an off-airport hotel requiring a bus or taxi.

I like the comfort of knowing I'm already out at the airport the night before my flight, and I like being able to sleep later in the morning. I'm the sort of traveler who massively pads each leg of a trip to an airport to allow for transportation catastrophes, so the extra sleep I get by waking up at Heathrow is a lot more than the scheduled travel time for the Underground ride from central London.

We were in London last Summer and our Delta flight was later in the day.
We had taken a bus near Victoria Station and waiting for our bus at the airport was over an hour and a bit chaotic. Also, once at the bus station near VS, we had to drag our luggage four blocks to the Premier Inn Victoria Station.
After that my wife insisted on our taking a taxi to the airport. We are in our late 70s and dragging luggage is a royal pain.

The taxi cost $150, the most I have ever spent for a taxi.

An airport hotel for an 11am flight because of an agency that doesn't exist in this country is bonkers and means you miss out on one last night of actual London. Heathrow is fine and the security staff are friendly and efficient. The concept of government shutdowns doesn't exist here, if the country is without political leadership, which very occasionally happens, then civil servants just discharge the last instructions they were given.

You are right by Waterloo, just get the Bakerloo to Piccadilly Circus then the Piccadilly Line to Heathrow. Or an Uber.

We have had bad luck before on the way to airports. We've been caught in traffic jams due to accidents (while we desperately look at maps for alternate routes). And we've been caught in super long, super slow security lines and had to run (gasping) to our gate (just in the nick of time). One time we were behind hundreds of high school or college kids who were part of some sporting competitions that had just finished. This was back when everybody had to take their shoes off, and some of these kids were clueless about how to go through security. Another time there was some kind of "comic con" event and the security line snaked outside the terminal (this was years ago, before the recent impacts of the TSA budget crisis).

So, yeah, I can understand the travelers who prefer to stay the night before at an airport hotel.

I will repeat. You will be in England, not the US. The TSA does not exist outside the US. Something that happened years ago (or last week, for that matter) in the US has little to no bearing on what happens now in London. If this anxiety will ruin your stay, then spend the last night at the airport. But al least wait until after dinner to go there. Who wants to spend their last evening in London staring at the walls of a sterile airport hotel?

The point of travel is things are different in different places. As a local I am somewhat well placed to suggest to you your fears are unfounded, and can only tell you what I would do in the same situation, which is not to get an airport hotel unless my flight is very early indeed.

If it is of any help I flew to Dusseldorf last week at a similar time of day, security took no more than ten minutes.

Well I am in Mardee’s camp on this one AND someone who was on the Tube to LHR for an early afternoon flight and all trains were stopped because of an incident on the track. I don’t recall which Tube stop it was but it wasn’t central London. We all had to get off and of course many of us were scrambling for alternate transportation. We eventually got a taxi to LHR and just made our flight (we always allow extra time because stuff happens and it has a few times over decades of travel). We are slightly less strict for flights within the continent but flights home, if missed, would be costly.

National Express in the UK always tell you to allow 1 hour more than the airline check in time at all the airports they serve (Heathrow, Gatwick, Luton, Stansted, Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester and formerly Newcastle).

So in this case 4 hours.

While I have insurance to cover against failure of public transport and mechanical breakdown of car/traffic congestion I'm not sure if they would say 3 or 4 hours is when cover starts.

Thus my aim would be 4 hours. Remember that the Elizabeth Line and Heathrow Express use the same tracks west of Paddington, so normally both will be affected by any incident.

4 hours gives me time to re-route via Feltham (from Waterloo), National Express (from Victoria), Uxbridge then the airlink bus, Ealing Broadway on the Central Line, or any of the other many routes from Central London to Heathrow (which the TfL planner should give). So I'd be pretty comfortable working to a 4 hour schedule- leaving County Hall at around 0545.

I will just say, as someone who travels out of Heathrow very regularly, for decades, I’ve never arrived more than two hours ahead of a flight and it has never been a problem. Everyone should do what they are comfortable with but for me two hours is always more than enough.

Sure. Most people would cut it closer than I do, and the odds are good they'd have no problem.

However, there's a difference between my risk as an American heading to LHR for a transatlantic flight (for which a last-minute one-way replacement ticket would probably cost over $1000 US, with not many good options per day) and the risk for a European who's more likely to be taking a short, intra-European flight that would be more easily and cheaply replaced.

Thanks to all for your input. We've decided to keep our reservation at the County Hall hotel and get up early to travel to the airport. If our flight was earlier in the morning, we would definitely stay at an airport hotel. We also appreciate the different routes that we could take to the airport. Now I have a Plan B (and C) if the need arises! 😉

I’m glad this thread has helped you make a decision. I will just add to my point above that 90% of the time I am travelling from Heathrow it’s either going to North America or Africa (sometimes Asia)- for short haul flights most people, including me, use the smaller airports like Gatwick or Luton. But again, everyone should do what they are most comfortable with.