Getting between London's airports

Major public transit connections of London airport (intra-airport buses not included) (Photo by Cnbrb)
Major public transit connections of London airport (intra-airport buses not included)
Major public transit connections of London airport (intra-airport buses not included), Connecting London airports, London (Photo by Cnbrb)
Locations of London airports and major public transit connections, Connecting London airports, London (Photo by Cnbrb)

If you have to transfer from one London airport to another, here are your best options

How can you get from one London airport to another?

Getting between Heathrow and Stansted, or Gatwick and Luton, or any other combination of two London airports is sometimes easy, sometimes tricky.

The easiest way is just to take a direct National Express bus (Nationalexpress.com) for £15 to £30.

With the exception of Heathrow-Gatwick (£18–£55 by private transfer, depending on how many you stuff in the car [2–8]), taking a taxi or car service is prohibitively expensive (expect to pay £80–£140 or more). And it is barely faster than the bus, if at all.

(If you happen to be connecting Gatwick and Luton, you can take a train—though you'll need to catch the 10-min./£2 shuttle bus ride between Luton's train station and Luton airport.)

Below are the general amount of travel time and ticket prices you can expect:

Connecting Heathrow to another London airport

HeathrowGatwick connections

Heathrow–Stansted connections

Heathrow–Luton connections

Connecting Gatwick to another London airport

Gatwick–Heathrow connections

Gatwick–Stansted connections

Gatwick–Luton connections

  • Bus: £20–£21.50; 2.5–3 hr. (Nationalexpress.com)
  • Train: £27–£30; 75 min. (includes 10 min./£2 for the Luton shuttle bus.]

Connecting Stansted to Luton airports

Luton–Stansted connections

Airfares links

Tips

Why not just go into London and back out again?

You can also always go into central London from one airport and then back out again to another, but that gets time-consuming—especially since no two airports use the same central London train station. 

The National Express bus will be faster and cheaper, so just do that.

Theoretically, to connect Heathrow with either Stansted or Luton you could ride the Jubilee line from Heathrow to Baker Street then walk a few blocks to switch to an Easybus shuttle to Luton or Stansted for a total cost of £5–£16, but that would take a minimum of 1.5 to 2 hours. To me, the small savings would not be worth it.

The only time this into-London-and-back-out technique is recommended: Connecting to little London City Airport, which is already in London and has a stop on the DLR/Tube system.

General tips of similar interest