Flying from the USA into London's Heathrow airport from Thursday through into Friday afternoon last week, I was subjected to an advert for Heathrow Express at the start of each and every video I watched during the flight. I won't post spoilers about the films and TV show reruns in case you've not seen them yet ... but I will pass comment on the video. Which I saw enough times to start thinking about, and then to photograph the screen so that I can comment later!
So much is given away by the marketing lines ...
* "No Stops" ... well, this looks like an acknowledgement if ever I've seen one that Heathrow Express gets priority over all other traffic into Hayes and Harlington and up to Paddington!
HSTs▸ may be brought to a crawl or stop before airport junction, but it seems that HEX are pretty sure they won't be.
* "No Traffic" ... err ... as I recall there's somewhere around 15 trains out of Paddington on the down main in peak hours, only 4 of which are headed into Heathrow. And as I recall some of those other trains can be quite busy? Of course, with the absolute priority that HEX seems to get, the airport passengers won't
notice the other traffic.
* I love the scenery out of the windows. That is a typical example of what you'll see from a HEX train, right? As far as I can recall, the journey's urban most of the way.
* "No Hassle". Agreed - easy to purchase tickets. And especially agreed if you compare it to the hassle that can be involved in getting walk up tickets to other destinations than Paddington. Indeed, I would suggest that you can "pay through the nose" for this contrast in hassle, which seems almost designed to maximised income for HEX.
I grabbed the photos above even before my experiences on arrival. And I would challenge any newcomer to the
UK▸ to get the best value onward walk up rail ticketing to their final destination station.
I landed at Heathrow - intercontinental at around 3 p.m.. Due to the scatter of arrival times on such flights (occasionally early, sometime late, even a day late sometimes) and mixture of taxiing, unloading, procesing and luggage times, I hadn't pre-ticketed to Melksham. Options were train, or the direct daily coach at 18:15 which is quite attractive with a 21:05 arrival into Melksham, and a five rather than 20 minute walk back to base with luggage. I could probably also have considered rail-air link to Reading, or coach to Chippenham and local bus from there.
A failed skybridge was just part of the longest elapsed time I can remember from touchdown to being clear of customs. Still over 2 hours before the coach, so I decided on the train ...
What I should have been able to do was ask for the best value to Melkham with a senior card from the chap who was selling train tickets at the ticket office. And by my calculation he should have sold me tickets totalling £22.40, with a cauution that I needed to change at Hayes and Harlington and Didcot (or if I changed at Reading to ensure I was on a train that then called at Didcot) and Swindon.
That's the sort of advise and help I would hope that would be delivered to new arrivals in this country looking to complete their journeys by train.
But he declined to serve me, and sent me to the machine opposite which was only offering pickups of preorders, and popular destinations. And whilst Melksham's popular with me, it isn't popular with the people who programmed the machine. Furthermore, I happened to know that I would have been charged £50.55 rather than £22.40 without a Didcot split, as the off peak Heathrow to Melksham (and Reading to Melksham) services have evening restrictions that I would hit, but both Heathrow to Didcot and Didcot to Melksham's off peak restrictions are morning only ones.
I did manage to get to a keyboard where I could enter "Didcot" - you select "popular destinations" then the button that was popular destinations changes to "other destinations", but I couldn't find a facility to get the second part of the journey ticket, so made to with just the Heathrow to Didcot, to purchase the remaining part pior to leaving Didcot.
And puchasing the second half was harder than it might sound. I asked the lady on Heathrow Connect if she could sell me an onward ticket and she said yes, but then declined when I told her what I wanted.
I went to the excess ticket window at Reading, but it was closed so went through the barriers on my Heathrow - Didcot and queued for what I wanted; lady in the ticket office reluctant to sell me a ticket from Didcot and questioned me about it even through I was precise in what I required. Thank goodness the Red Dragon was a couple of minutes late and I managed to get back through the barrier and over the bridge (and with all my luggage coming back from my intercontinental trip, remember) just in time.
So - yes - I agree that Heathrow Express is "No Hassle" and "Low Commotion" when compared to the much lower priced alternatives!
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