Heathrow Express drops £5.50 one-way advance tickets

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• polly says:

  28 Nov28 November 06:13

  Is there a minimum spend? So you don’t know if you qualify until after you have booked, and then seek approval from MH? And no cooling off period? Any idea of how long the vouchers are valid for? And if they must be spent within Malaysia? Thinking it might be worth it, booking up 3 family members to Bali next year.

  • Rob says:

    28 Nov28 November 07:07

    ? The vouchers are retail vouchers – John Lewis or whatever you pick. Any flight counts.

• The real Swiss Tony says:

  28 Nov28 November 06:19

  I once managed to book a £5.50 ticket for myself. Was travelling with my daughter and we had a family railcard so the fare dropped to something like £3.80.

  All trains cancelled, ended up paying for Lizzie Line to West Drayton then an Uber. ompensation paid by HEX? £3.80.

  • TimM says:

    28 Nov28 November 08:18

    Surely there once a ticket is bought there is a contract to get you from A to B. In the good old days you would simply visit the station manager’s office and if there was no alternative train route, a taxi would be ordered. I doubt stations have local managers anymore and there are so many companies involved to refuse to accept any responsibility so things are trickier. However, the principle is the same.

    • Matty says:

      28 Nov28 November 08:27

      My train was cancelled recently. I went to the station office and obtained a refund for the full amount of the ticket. I had to take the bus. The journey on the bus was 70 minutes longer than the train and I had to wait a good while for the bus to arrive. I arrived at work a good 2 hours later than I usually do.

      I went online to Delay Repay, which claims to offer compensation fo delayed travel. I’d taken a picture of my tickets. I uploaded my details etc. The claim was rejected because I’d already claimed a refund – so no actual compensation due for the delay.

      Ridiculous.

      • Rich says:

        28 Nov28 November 09:34

        Never accept the refund! The same would be true on an airline – if you take the refund, you absolve them of any duty to reroute you.

      • jjoohhnn says:

        28 Nov28 November 10:06

        TFL don’t do delay repay either. I had a delay recently caused by London Overground and their delay refund scheme if you have a paper ticket is both difficult to access – 3 phone calls and two e-mails, and also they will only pay for the delay to their part of the journey, not the delay caused to the entire journey. Great! :S

        • apbj says:

          28 Nov28 November 11:30

          TfL does offer delay repay, but as you say they make it as hard as possible. In addition, Overground and Elizabeth line claims are for 30m or more, which is absurd given that long-distance operaters like GWR and LNER offer some compensation after only 15m.

          I have submitted dozens of delay claims for the Elizabeth line (which I use on my daily commute) and they have all been rejected, without explanation. There is no way to challenge the refusal except by calling the contact centre and waiting on hold, then raise a new delay claim, repeating all the information from the original claim (having to spell out Paddington etc to the operative) … and then getting the inevitable second unexplained rejection a week later.

          It’s an absolute racket.

    • The Savage Squirrel says:

      28 Nov28 November 08:59

      To be fair, whenever I’ve experienced such issues with a train ticket, I’vehopped onto anything that will get me there – sometimes via another route. Explaining the situation to whoever is checking tickets has resulted in them letting me continue my journey with no issues or extra charge 100% of the time. To be fair, I’m mainly travelling in t’north which probably helps as people are friendly and helpful by default 😉

    • The real Swiss Tony says:

      28 Nov28 November 09:42

      That was my thinking. I even proposed to HEX that they offer me a replacement any time open ticket instead of the refund, which I thought was totally fair as it at least came close to covering my extra costs but instead they quite gleefully told me where I could stick that idea.

• Dominic says:

  28 Nov28 November 06:33

  I assume with the Elizabeth Line, they don’t feel like they need to compete on price as much anymore, given the price of the main alternative.

  • Dominic says:

    28 Nov28 November 08:18

    But it’s 13.30 from Heathrow to Zone 2 during peak (whereby railcards are not valid). So sure, cheap if you plan to take numerous rides in a day. Expensive if you are doing one journey.

  • e14 says:

    28 Nov28 November 09:07

    How do you book a zone 1-6 travel card in the UBER app ?

    • daveinitalia says:

      28 Nov28 November 10:08

      You need to book it as a same day return (even if you’re not going back) so outward sometime after 10:00 and the return a few hours later on the same day. The start point needs to be in zone 6. I use Heathrow Terminal 5 as my start point and Whitechapel as the end point and then select Network Railcard. Even if you’re only going in the other direction (central London to Heathrow) it’s important that the start point is a zone 6 station like Heathrow. The ticket you collect is a standard paper travelcard so it doesn’t matter what you put as your destination but I know Whitechapel works.

  • jjoohhnn says:

    28 Nov28 November 10:03

    I was going to say, aren’t paper day travelcards are being scraped from January? But it looks like TFL have done a deal to keep them!

    • daveinitalia says:

      28 Nov28 November 10:50

      That deal happened a few weeks ago. Not sure whether prices will rise significantly.

      • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

        28 Nov28 November 11:34

        3% on top of the normal inflationary increase

  • CheshirePete says:

    28 Nov28 November 21:49

    Be careful of that GGL upgrade with your Railcard! I only used the benefit once, and the inspector said it wasn’t valid in conjunction with a Railcard. So I offered to move next door with 7 mins to go in the journey, and he said it was fine this time but keep it in mind! LOL!

• NigelHamilton says:

  28 Nov28 November 06:58

  Damn, had not got round to booking the £5.50 tickets for a BA holiday in Feb next year – with us being a family of 5, it was £7.30 one way! You snooze you lose!

• Paul says:

  28 Nov28 November 07:38

  The decision to drop these fares is a disgrace and again banishes any pretence by Heathrow that they have a credible sustainable travel policy or given a flying … about the environment. £16.50 by train, £5 to drive, £6 to park for 29 minutes and a supplement in the Elizabeth line! It is not possible to access Heathrow easily or conveniently without lining their pockets. Aside from U.K. airports is there anywhere in Europe that has similar policies or such poor public transport links to major or indeed 2nd level hubs?

  Again we see the folly of not having a strong regulator with real teeth and remit to protect consumers!

  Heathrow is the embodiment of rip of Britain!

  • JDB says:

    28 Nov28 November 08:00

    @Paul – are you actually at all familiar with airport regulation? If you were to read the H7 settlement or the recent appeals you might realise that the reality is rather different.

    One of the reasons that airport charges appear relatively high in this country is partly that they are rolled into one rather than a series of smaller charges that come to the same thing, but the main reason is that all political parties agree on the ‘user pays’ principle whereas in many other countries central government/general taxation picks up some or all of the costs and receives no subsidy. HAL and other UK airports also have to pay all sorts of costs not usually paid by airport operators eg police/fire/ambulance. The ‘rip off’ charges you often mention are factored into the regulatory settlement so don’t line anyone’s pocket.

    • Track says:

      28 Nov28 November 14:11

      HAL has to pay to the Police??

      Do they accept cards or it has to be a bank transfer? As to the ambulance, maintaining a small station with nurses only (not real doctors) is a pittance in their operating cost.

      • JDB says:

        28 Nov28 November 17:00

        Yes, HAL pays for the entire (large) cost of policing at Heathrow although it is under the operational control of the Met. HAL operates its own fire service albeit in close co-operation with the local public services. The ambulance provision including the cycle paramedics plus the staffed medical centre is rather more important than you suggest.

  • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

    28 Nov28 November 11:42

    the ‘supplement’ included in Lizzie line tickets that start / end at LHR is the access fee for TFL to be able to use HALs tunnels and platforms.

    So unless you want no Lizzie line trains to LHR …

  • Andrew. says:

    28 Nov28 November 11:57

    Or you can park for 29 minutes and drop-off/pick up for £zero. Blue badge holder get 2 hours free.

    Pensioners can take the local buses for free to the airport. You can take a local bus for £2 single from Reading or Watford.

    It’s only expensive if you choose to make it expensive.

    • Rob Collins says:

      28 Nov28 November 13:27

      Or you happen not to live in/near London…

• NigelthePensioner says:

  28 Nov28 November 07:47

  Well smugly I must admit to finding 2 £5.50 tickets about a month ago, for travel in March!! Take off the 2 senior rail card discounts and voila! A fare that represents true honest value for the journey.
  Whist Citizen Khan(‘t) racks on emission taxes for cars (at an airport!!) other transport means will respond by jacking up prices. Before you say it, how many charging points in total does LHR have at all of its car parks? 😁

  • CamFlyer says:

    28 Nov28 November 08:32

    How many public charging points are in car parks anywhere outside of London? In East Anglia, they are few and far between — I can go weeks without seeing any.

    Contrast to my sparsely used London office car park, which I discovered yesterday now has an electric charger at every one of the 18 spots (but no obvious bicycle racks, though I’ve been assured they are there).

    • Andrew. says:

      28 Nov28 November 12:05

      Loads. The world doesn’t end at the M25.

      42 superfast chargers at Oxford Redbridge P&R, 30 in the Westgate shopping centre car park nearby and more dotted around the City. There are now way more chargers than there are petrol pumps inside the ring road.

      30 at the Stirling Craigforth P&R.

      Plus, don’t most people just charge on their drive?

  • executiveclubber says:

    28 Nov28 November 10:54

    Don’t think Heathrow’s tight grip on controlling all transport methods in and out of Heathrow has anything to do with the mayor tbh but it probably suits your agenda to keep thinking that way

• flyforfun says:

  28 Nov28 November 08:26

  So, because HAL own the tracks. London Underground has to charge £12.20 (single Paddington to Heathrow). Hardly worth paying £16.50 to save 10 to 15 mins, especially if you have to book in advance.

• Charlie says:

  28 Nov28 November 08:33

  The 33% reward discount on Virgin Atlantic is a surprisingly good deal. Yesterday I managed to get two UC seats to LA next October for just 90,000 points and a 2-4-1 voucher. I certainly hope they repeat the deal next Black Friday.

  • Rich says:

    28 Nov28 November 10:21

    How much in “fees” though?

    • Charlie says:

      28 Nov28 November 12:39

      Yes, the fees are a hefty £995 each. But for comparison, BA would want fees of £1,700 each for the equivalent trip if you selected the pricing option of 90,000 Avios. You’d need 152,000 Avios if you wanted to reduce the fees to £680 each.

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