Why is Gatwick such a big pain in the arse to get ro

…which is actually slower to get into London than the regular train!

Hear hear to this! Was going to post exactly the same thing!

Chugging along ? It takes no time at all to get from Gatwick into London. If you want faster then take the Gatwick Express.

This is spectacularly untrue @Pavementworrier

It’s certainly true that investment should be put into upgrading the train lines from London going south, particularly the London to Brighton line. This would be a far better investment than HS2 to make travel to Birmingham slightly quicker given these are major commuter routes and the route to a major airport.

Is this a reverse “Watford gap” post? There are obviously quite a lot of places in the south of England from which Gatwick is relatively convenient to access.

If you live north of London use Luton or Stanstead. There are other regional airports as well.

Why would you expect any airport to be easy to access for anybody regardless of where they live?

It's designed to be accessible from London (and Reading) by train.

Getting there any other way is a pain mainly because the price of bringing the M23 into South London was eye-watering.

It was perfectly accessible for us when we lived in S London (via East Croydon) but now we're west of Reading, we use Birmingham whenever possible.

Its 29 mins from Gatwick to London Bridge, quicker than the GE to Victoria

@Pavementworriereasy for me. Why is it a pain for you?

The Gatwick transport infrastructure isn't great, for an international airport that serves London. Unless Victoria works for you, you're chugging along on suburban trains at 20 miles an hour through the Surrey countryside which hardly screams sophisticated metropolitan traveller. But then transport infrastructure is pretty terrible for all UK airports, they are all a ball ache to get in and out of.

Gatwick is very well connected to the South East, it’s just not very well connected to West London. So perhaps you’re just starting from the wrong place?

Maybe for you but the best location for others. Silly thread.

I live in suburban London... Gatwick is great for us. We never drive there, get the train a couple of stops to London bridge and then train to Gatwick. Obviously all this depends on where you live

Depends where you live. We're in West Kent and Gatwick is absolutely fine for us. Trainwise we can go to London Bridge or Victoria to get the connection otherwise it takes us about 45 mins to drive. We picked up friends from there last week and did the round trip in about 2.15 hours including parking and waiting for them to come through. Conversely my brother and family live in Colchester and their local airport is Stansted. He loathes it, has had major delays to and from the last few times and would sooner go to Gatwick!

When we go on holiday we factor in parking and an overnight stay at the Premier Inn at Gatwick as we have an early flight but that suits us.

It's about 4 stops from my local station. Perfect. I don't live in Croydon.

But one or two stops on the train? But the trains don't run all night tbf

I'm in Bham. It's down the m40, round the m25 (allowing an hour for jams) and down again and bingo! It's a pretty straight run. Or train, taxi or tube and train. I'm perplexed as to what you expect.
I live near Bham airport. But will go from lgw if its cheaper taking into account petrol and parking.

If you think LGW is inaccessible, try Bristol…

If they did they would probably have to tarmac the runways.

You are right. Sorry, l was thinking short haul. The long haul set up at Gatwick is reduced though and tends to use older aircraft, when compared with Heathrow. Not that there’s much difference in economy.

BA withdrew many of its routes from LGW post pandemic and have not yet returned in full. You can get there by direct train, even Thameslink from north of London, across from Kent and Reading on GWR or National coaches.

The Elizabeth Line is a game changer for Heathrow. After a week of enduring America's so called public transport, I could have cried with relief when we got off the red eye from JFK at Heathrow and straight on to a clean, modern, fast train that connected smoothly with a 20 min train jouney back to my local station.

Its not. 45 minute drive for me

For us it takes 2 hours by train or you have to drive and pay parking charges, we are in the South East. I love travel but the complete cost just to get to and from the airport from where we live is always the cost of a night in a decent hotel for both of us or more if I pay for parking to get us home by car, which means driving an hour and a half straight after usually multiple hours of travel.

I find the timings of the flights hard for us - the 2 hrs to get there rules out the super early ones as no trains get there on time. Some flights only have 2 or 3 options a day.

Gatwick connects to multiple stations in London and the bit of the M25 that approaches the M23 is significantly less busy than the bit of the M25 near Heathrow so driving to it is generally easier too.

Any chance of further explanation of your beef OP?