Taking the Elizabeth Line to Heathrow?

It is interesting to see this reported out. We found ourselves stopped on the Elizabeth Line in June at Paddington and everyone was told to disembark, that it wouldn’t be running any further that day. We were traveling with our luggage from LHR to the Stratford station and found ourselves walking, waiting and using two other lines that we had to research on the fly. It ended up taking more than our allotted time and margin for our original journey so we noticed on our account the next day that we were charged a penalty for a long journey or our day’s cap didn’t compute correctly? We also had the worry that the gates at Paddington had been left open to facilitate the hundreds of passengers making a dash from the Elizabeth Line to an alternate line. I asked the attendant about taping and he said just go.

I’m thankful we weren’t traveling in the opposite direction to catch a flight as our journey took one extra hour because of our cobbled together routing after our stop.

We applied for an adjustment on our account online since staying on a journey for so long wasn’t our fault. We were given a small credit of about £4 which was appreciated. Thanks for the warning Nigel. It’s a good reminder to have apps loaded and be able to keep moving, even if Lizzy stops. While she was running that evening it was very nice. When she stopped it got hectic and very crowded everywhere else at rush hour.

Thank you for this, that 9.1% is exactly what I’m afraid of! I’m staying near Paddington, leaving on Sunday 9/24 and while Elizabeth seems a great option I don’t like uncertainty when it comes to getting to the airport. The Heathrow Express doesn’t start running until around 7:40 that day due to planned engineering work so I have that as well as the Piccadilly line as backups…flight leaves at 12:20 so I will get an early start.

If HEX is not running due to engineering work, then the Elizabeth line is also affected, as it uses the same tracks. The TfL engineering work calendar shows no Elizabeth line between Paddington and Ealing Broadway before 0745. Thus the first EL is shown on the journey planners as at 0743 from Paddington.
Before then use the District or Central lines from central London to Ealing Broadway.

Engineering work can and sometimes does over-run- that would lead to later first HEX and Elizabeth line trains.

Maybe consider using National Express coaches from Victoria if really worried

9.1% of trains cancelled is 1 in 10, meaning that 9 of 10 ran. Sensationalist journalism. What the report stated, though rather glossed over (as usual) by the BBC, was that the vast majority of the cancellations were due to infrastructure problems, not train faults.

Those infrastructure issues would also have affected HEX and GWR main line trains if they happened between the airport and Paddington. They couldn't not have done so.

There is another thread which says something similar about the Piccadilly line- that it is the least reliable tube line!!

the vast majority of the cancellations were due to infrastructure problems, not train faults.

that was one of the most frustrating things I had to deal with when I worked in Delay Attribution where I had to research the circumstances of almost all delays on my patch. In the huge percentage of cases my train company was not responsible. It was either another train company, sometimes knock on from an incident halfway across the country, or infrastructure or weather or vandalism.

I spun a lot of wheels writing up all that and batting the delays away from us.