Since this will be our first trip to Europe, I am clueless about the distance/travel time when we arrive. If the plane is scheduled to land at 6:40 AM at Heathrow, and we are staying in the Westminster area, can someone give an estimated time on what time we should reach the hotel? We already have transfers from the airport to the hotel, so we should not have to rely or call a taxi, or other transportation.
Posted by
Medford, OR, USA
5837 posts
Try the London transit planner:
https://tfl.gov.uk/plan-a-journey/
Posted by
Tresana, Highlands Ranch, CO, USA
23355 posts
Extremely hard to predict. At that time of the morning you could have enormous traffic problems with a shuttle or driver. For a ballpark thought -- maybe a hour for clearing immigration and another hour for you shuttle. Maybe at the hotel by 900 or closer to 1000.
Posted by
OP
Tuscaloosa, AL
86 posts
I've "allowed" a travel time of four hours so if we are they at 10:30, all is good. Our son arrives three days before we do, so we will have access to the hotel room, which will be a bonus.
Posted by
Kihei, Hawaii
475 posts
Just got back from London. On the way there we landed Friday morning about 11am. Took 3.5 hours from touchdown, through passport control, pick up luggage, purchased Oyster card and tube to Central London hotel (right near the London Eye).
Flew back into Heathrow from Austria and arrived on a Saturday evening about 9pm and it took us 1 hour. We did take Uber that time though rather than tube.
So as others have said it can really vary!!
Posted by
Portsmouth
5311 posts
Whilst not Heathrow this is an example of how difficult it is to predict immigraton times. Last Saturday we travelled through Gatwick which is typically a quick pass through immigration but it was the busiest I have experienced it, even the non-EU line only had about 20 passengers and there was no family line to take advantage of because pretty much everyone in the EU line was a family with young children. My eldest kept eyeing up the e-gates with increasing frustration (we have one month before our youngest can use them) and after half an hour of waiting we agreed that I would take my eldest through the e-gates and go on to collect our baggage whilst my wife stayed in line with our other son. It took them a further half hour to clear immigration. This is the longest we have ever experienced but it was primarily due to the sheer volume of families returning from the half term holiday. There are a lot of variables when it comes to estimating arrival and transfer times however the figure of 4 hours that has been mentioned I would suggest is ample time.