Late departure from London airports

zagmund

If I'm reading things correctly, it looks like the latest weekday departures from London to Dublin are -
2050 LGW with EI
2110 LHR with EI
2125 LGW with FR

I know that how long it takes to get to each airport will depend on where in London you start from, and I can account for that.

What I don't know is how long it takes to get through them these days. Last time I passed through Heathrow about 18 months ago, it all looked fine and queue-free until I walked through from the landside and hit a monstrous queue for x-ray. I can't remember how long it took, but it was a long, long time.

Last time I came back through Gatwick with Ryanair (a Sunday afternoon flight) the queues for everything were huge. It took forever to process through and I was sweating buckets, until just after we got through xray with something like 5 minutes before take-off they announced it was delayed for an unkown amount of time.

So, for a Tuesday evening departure, and assuming that you can place yourself on the correct side of London earlier in the day to get the tube/train/express to the relevant airport without much ado, which flight would you suggest is likely to be 'optimal' in terms of getting through the airport with the minimum of time spent queueing ?

z

bkehoe

zagmund wrote: »

If I'm reading things correctly, it looks like the latest weekday departures from London to Dublin are -
2050 LGW with EI
2110 LHR with EI
2125 LGW with FR

I know that how long it takes to get to each airport will depend on where in London you start from, and I can account for that.

What I don't know is how long it takes to get through them these days. Last time I passed through Heathrow about 18 months ago, it all looked fine and queue-free until I walked through from the landside and hit a monstrous queue for x-ray. I can't remember how long it took, but it was a long, long time.

Last time I came back through Gatwick with Ryanair (a Sunday afternoon flight) the queues for everything were huge. It took forever to process through and I was sweating buckets, until just after we got through xray with something like 5 minutes before take-off they announced it was delayed for an unkown amount of time.

So, for a Tuesday evening departure, and assuming that you can place yourself on the correct side of London earlier in the day to get the tube/train/express to the relevant airport without much ado, which flight would you suggest is likely to be 'optimal' in terms of getting through the airport with the minimum of time spent queueing ?

z

In terms of the tube times if it helps you to plan, then allow about 40 mins from Gloucester road tube station. An extra 10 mins if you get on a tube that says 'Terminal 4 & 123' as it will stop at T4 and wait for 5 mins or so before looping back to 123.

The Heathrow Express will take about 15 - 20 mins from Paddington and more or less guarantees a comfortable seat with non stop sky news on the tv, but is of course a lot more expensive. The Piccadilly line should have calmed down by then and you should easily get a seat, especially if you go to one end of a platform.

I can normally do tube station to 80 series gates in T1 Heathrow in 20 minutes. Have been through at peak times and it maybe adds an extra 5 minutes but certainly I've never taken more than 30 mins to get through it. I do walk at a decent pace though so if you're slow, the kind that stops on the travelators, etc then add an extra 10 mins.
All presuming no bags to check in but the Aer Lingus desks are normally fairly quiet and if you arrive an hour beforehand to check in a case I'd say you'd be fine.

schemingbohemia

There's a 2150 flight from LHR with BMI whose prices are very competitive.

Gatwick I've found much smoother than LHR, certainly getting from the train station to the security gates is quicker.