Rolling Traveler

Imagine you’re taking a trip from Los Angeles to Cracow, and you’re trying to work out the best price. You have found some good deals for LAX to London Heathrow, but from there to Cracow seems expensive. However, you’ve found a low-cost airline running a flight there from London Stansted that leaves 5 hours after you land, and flying that route would be a significant saving. The two airports are both London airports, but could you make it from one to the other in time? 5 hours seems like a lot of time, and there is a coach that is supposed to get from Heathrow to Stansted in just 90 minutes: surely that would be a feasible option.

 Well, much as it sounds like you could make it, you might want to think again, especially if you’re a wheelchair user. The coaches for this route are not accessible, meaning you’d have to take the train into the city (~15 or ~25 minutes), a bus across town (up to an hour, depending on traffic), and a train out to Stansted (45 minutes), making your journey time at least 2 hours, and that’s not counting waiting time. With the potential for delays at immigration and baggage reclaim at Heathrow, and the need to arrive at Stansted in plenty of time to check in with your airline and with the assistance crew, you might end up missing the flight. This particular saving is a false economy, with the stress and effort taking all the value out of it.

 Transferring from one airport to another in London is not something wheelchair users should undertake lightly. There are accessible coaches from Heathrow to Gatwick (the 240 line) and from Stanstead to Luton (the 737 and 767 lines), but until the National Express replaces all its coaches with easy access vehicles, which is planned to happen by 2012, the only options for other transfers are the train-bus/cab-train route, or using a cab or shuttle service. For someone unfamiliar with the city, the former option could prove stressful, not to mention long, with extra time needed to find the right bus stop and train platform.

 Furthermore, either option could cost more than the money you’d saved by traveling with the low-cost airline. Using Heathrow to Stansted again as the example, Heathrow to the city one way is £6.90 or £16.50; the bus from Paddington Station to Liverpool Street Station is free, but can take a long time; and the Stansted Express is £17 one way: that’s at least £23.50 extra if you’re traveling alone, which is $43 or €30 at today’s exchange rate. Taking a cab or other private hire vehicle could cost upwards of £120 ($220/€152) according to one web site, and from £100 ($183/€126) according to another.

 I made the journey from Heathrow to Stansted once, traveling alone, and only because I absolutely had to. I left Heathrow terminal 3 for the train platform at 2.15 pm, got to Paddington Station at 2.56, arrived at Liverpool Street Station at 4.28, and got to Stansted at 5.32 pm, in time for my flight, but tense and tired. Bear in mind that I know London very well, so I didn’t have to stop and ask for directions at any stage: it was still a strain. I’ll probably never do it again, unless the coach service does become fully accessible. A transfer of this sort may be a false economy due to the train costs, and certainly is in terms of the strain: do yourself a favor, and find a transfer through the airport you land in, or better yet, a direct flight, and put the energy you save towards enjoying the time at your destination.

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