Plane Talk: Optimism is good – but not always when planning flight connections

BA passengers intending to transfer between Heathrow and Gatwick should take into account the complex geography between the two

(Getty)

“Can flights be sold with unrealistic transfers?” asks Matt Foure. He is one of the many passengers on British Airways who has to transfer between Heathrow and Gatwick; BA’s route networks from its two main hubs are mostly complementary. Mr Foure booked a trip online that delivered a connection between arrival at Heathrow and departure from Gatwick of three hours 15 minutes. In late afternoon on a Friday.

If you are familiar with the geography of these two airports, you will know that the only realistic route between them is on the M25 and then the southern bit of the M23. And if you are familiar with these roads at teatime at the end of the week, you will probably conclude this looks like a case of “Computer says Yes – even though it probably shouldn’t”.

Heathrow and Gatwick airports are individually complex and are located 40 miles apart by road. British Airways says: “We recommend that you allow at least three hours if you’re connecting between these airports.” That’s not a three hours between leaving Heathrow (after passing through immigration, picking up your baggage and going through customs) and dropping your bags at the BA desk at Gatwick. It’s an official minimum connecting time between the scheduled arrival of the plane at Heathrow, and the scheduled departure of the next flight from Gatwick.

The airline appears to base its confidence that three hours is sufficient on the transport link it recommends: “The best way to travel directly between Heathrow and Gatwick is to take a National Express coach. It is fast, frequent, safe and great value for money,” says BA. “Heathrow to Gatwick coach services run 80 times a day, and the journey takes up to an hour.”

Looking at the National Express online timetable, British Airways is over-optimistic about how long it will take. Assuming you are going from Heathrow Terminal 5 (BA’s main base) to Gatwick’s South Terminal, the only trip scheduled to take under an hour that I have been able to find is the departure at 4am on a Sunday morning, when it is down to 55 minutes. All the other off-peak journeys I can see are scheduled to take 60 or 65 minutes, with some peak hour services extended to 75 minutes.

Now, with a three-hour-15-minute window Mr Foure could still be pretty confident about making the connection even if traffic jams extended the time by, say, half an hour.

Except that the National Express schedule is erratic, especially on a Friday afternoon. Those 80 buses a day, if spaced out evenly, would depart every 18 minutes. But they don’t. Some are the dedicated 747 express links between the two airports, others are segments of longer trips, and the schedules appear uncoordinated.

On a Friday two buses are timed to depart simultaneously at 4.20pm; with Mr Foure’s aircraft’s arrival scheduled for 4.15pm he will plainly miss both the coaches.

He will have to wait almost an hour, to 5.15pm, for the next bus (and there are four more in the next half-hour). It is due to arrive at Gatwick at 6.20pm. With a flight scheduled for 7.30pm, if everything runs to time then Mr Foure should be OK.

Since he has bought a ticket with a “legal” connection (ie one that the airline permits), all he can do is hope for the best – that the M25 and M23 motorways may be busy but fluid. Mr Foure could reduce the risk of missing the connection by paying extra to take a taxi, but this has issues, too; pre-booked cabs don’t always show up on time and aren’t always easy to find, while London taxis on the rank aren’t known for their impressive motorway cruising speed. So I’d stick to BA’s recommended option, the coach.

Incidentally, National Express has a very different recommendation for time: “We recommend allowing at least three hours between your coach arrival time and scheduled flight departure.”

Should Mr Foure miss the connection, and can demonstrate (with the help of notes on what time the plane and the baggage arrived, when the bus left Heathrow and reached Gatwick) that he made strenuous efforts to catch the plane, British Airways will have to put him on the next available flight and pay for a hotel and meals until then.

The transfer isn’t as tight as it might be: British Airways happily sells a connection from Geneva, arriving at Heathrow at 8.15am on a Monday morning and transferring to Gatwick for the flight to Barbados at 11.15am. While I am all in favour of minimising the time between flights, at the start of the working week a tangle with traffic seems almost inevitable.

A good human travel agent (as opposed, in my experience, to the online variety) will naturally point out such challenges, and suggest alternatives – but if you are booking everything yourself, then beware of excessive optimism.