It’s nearing the end of my 19 day trip in England. I’ve been journaling so I can write a trip report when I return :). My flight home leaves Heathrow at 11:00am on Saturday. My lodging is near the Holbrook underground station and I have pre-book tickets for the Heathrow Express departing from Paddington Station.
How much time should I allow to get to Heathrow for my flight? Any estimates are appreciated.
I hope that you have done a typo and that you are staying at Holborn - if so it's an hour on the Piccadilly line, from Holborn to the Heathrow terminals. Add an extra five minutes for T5.
If this is a long haul flight they recommend 3 hours before so aim to be at Holborn for 0700 latest. The Underground will be very frequent at that time of day.
Do you mean Holborn underground station?
If so, you could have just taken the Piccadilly line direct to Heathrow. No changes.
But you already bought the HE tickets.
Give yourself at least an hour. To get to Paddington, you can take a taxi, two trains, or a bus and a train.
Go to this website, fill in your information and it will give you all your options.
Just saw the typo…yes Holborn. I’ve been using the TfL Go app on my phone but sometimes it gives me some funky info, making a route way more complicated than it needs be. I finally caught on that it’s really common for lines to be experiencing severe delays so hence the complicated re-routing. Many times we’ve opted to just walk even if it adds 15+ minutes to where we want to go.
Appreciate the replies!
I finally caught on that it’s really common for lines to be experiencing severe delays so hence the complicated re-routing.
Actually it’s not at all common.
You could also take The Elizabeth Line from Tottenham Court Rd
I'm risk-averse on flight days and would leave my hotel an hour earlier than any mapping website tells me to. I hate early wake-up calls, but the financial penalty for missing a transatlantic flight doesn't bear thinking about (for me).
While it's good that the TfL system automatically recalculates for delays, even when running normally I find that the journey planner does over complicate things sometimes, and suggest routes you may not have thought of. As it's the fastest route it will always give you a via HEx route.
I can think of at least 4 one change rail routes from Holborn to Paddington, and maybe a bus line or two as well, all the rail routes are much of a muchness in time terms.
If the flight leaves at 11am, you need to be at the airport by 8am, so leaving by no later than 6.30 am gives you a pretty comfortable time buffer, while not going overboard on the caution.
It should take between 45 minutes and an hour to get there.
In an ideal world I would have wanted to stay at the airport on Friday night to have an unstressed start, but that's clearly not possible now.
Hi there isn31c! Wanted to give you a huge thank you for the private message reply you sent me a month ago when I was panicking over the train strike on May 31 - the day we were traveling from Stow-on-the-Wold to York. I followed your plan exactly and we made it to York with zero problems.
We got on the Oxford Tube at its origination station with about 20 other people but after a half dozen stops the bus was full. We passed at least two stops with more than 30 people waiting in line looking frantic and frustrated. I felt badly for them but was so happy that you gave me a plan that got me smoothly to York. Thanks again for all your help.
Leia,
It's always good to hear a report back.
Pleased to hear that all went well with your journey to York that day.
