Transfer Heathrow-Gatwick in 3hrs?!

Sunday evening...international flight, arriving from Brazill what are my chances or alternative options? Thanks!

3 hours is fine.

The coach shouldn't take longer than an hour and a bit.

Oh and welcome to Flyertalk and the BAEC community.

You will receive an official welcome with a timing of the transfer by the minute soon from CWS but welcome from me.

Hmm - assuming non-EU passport, luggage, M25 and a bit of a trek at Gatwick to the BA check in, I'd be a bit nervous about this and wouldn't book it unless I had no alternative!

But you should be OK if you hustle. Might be worth arranging a transfer to cut out any coach hassle/waiting time - if there are 2+ of you it's pretty much same price anyway. I've used BA transfer (not related to the airline...)

I'm also assuming this is all on BA on one ticket, who will look after you if the BA inbound is delayed for any reason. Absolutely would not be doing this on separate tickets without a backup plan

FT has a dedicate LHR LGW thread
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/u-k-i...d-threads.html Click the top wiki to open
A later thread http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/briti...ial-guide.html

Welcome to FT.

I would be worried. MCT recommendations are 3h and according to others you can do it in a lot less.

Wiki says.

NOTE: On Sunday evenings factor in one more hour in the MCT.

This is why I would be worried.

You need to provide more information. Are you on one or separate tickets? What passport do you hold? What airlines? This sounds very tight to me.

I will also welcome you to Flyertalk and to the BA Board, it's good to see you here and I hope you have a good trip from Brazil. Welcome on board to this forum, I hope you will find this place useful for this sort of information.

In that respect you have been pointed to some useful links, the main one being the pictorial guide which is in the Dashboard.

The trip itself takes about an hour by coach or taxi, maybe a bit less on a Sunday evening, and 100 minutes or so by train/tube. You also need to be in LHR about an hour from departure, so you can see that it is do-able, provided you can get in a position to get on a coach/taxi/train at the given point. EEA/Swiss passport and HBO would the fastest, and if on one booking your trip is protected if you don't make it. It normally takes me 20 minutes or so from arrival gate/doors open to the train station. Checked baggage takes out an another 20 minutes or so, non EEA passport - well actually LGW South isn't usually too bad, I would guess an extra 10 minutes for that, but you can pay to jump the queue via the LGW website.

For those with a nervous disposition, we're doing this notional 3h20m connection in a few weeks (on a Wednesday morning), on one BA PNR:

JER-LGW, BA2771 - ETA 1050. Hopefully a bit earlier than published. Bus to Terminal South, collect bags [20-25 mins?] and walk to NEX Coach stop [5-10 mins?].

LGW-LHR - NEX. Booked on FK200, ETD 1130, ETA LHR T5 1230. Flex ticket as a precaution. That should give a comfortable hour at T5 to drop cases, get through Security and head for the gate (in T5A). Use of First Wing [our first use] will be highly beneficial!

LHR-DUB, BA0830 - ETD 1410

Provided there are no dramas or hiccups anywhere, it should be fine. And if we do end up missing the DUB flight, BA will have the responsibility to re-book us on a later flight. Fortunately we're night-stopping in DUB, so no further connections needed on that day.

Everything leads me to assume Dona Urraca is coming from Brazil and will be connecting to a flight out of Gatwick.

Or maybe not 'connecting'.

Whichever it is, and largely regardless of direction of travel, the 'issue' remains fairly constant

Not to belabour the point, but someone who knows the way both airports work, has a EU passport, and is on a single BA ticket has a significantly higher chance of success under these conditions than someone who has never been to either airport, travels on a Brazilian passport, tries to figure out at LHR how to get to LGW, and has self-bought a flight on easyJet that same evening.

I used to be involved with a business at Gatwick and Heathrow and am reminded of a phone call from a very confused mobility assistant man at T3 who was looking for our location - which on investigation the couple were actually trying to get him to wizz them to Gatwick on the golf buggy

I think people quite often just do not realise the distance involved - particularly when you can buy an across London connection without a huge amount of warning. I've seen many times people expecting that the transport/luggage is all handled for them and are very shocked when they are exited into a foreign country to fork out a small fortune for a public bus for a tour of the UK motorways!

Anyway in this particular instance hopefully the OP comes back so we can advise further. Assuming they are on the Rio flight that actually arrives at 1pm, which is a far better proposition than 6pm...

I would think about a cab. You only need to pay GBP50-60 for a pre booked car and then you should have no issues. You should allow 2 hours for the bus, (traffic and waiting for the bus); so if you only have 3 in total it might be tight.
Even in a cab its taken me 90 minutes in bad traffic. Generally its 45 mins. Sunday evening can get a little busy too.