Event & venue transfers
Fixed at £85 from Strand to Heathrow Airport, about 20.2 miles and 45 min on a clear road. The price is locked when you book, not when you travel.
A taxi from Strand to Heathrow Airport is £85 in a saloon, £105 in a 6-seat MPV and £115 in an 8-seater. It is about 20.2 miles and 45 min off-peak, or 1h 10m in traffic. The fare is fixed at the moment you book and covers tolls, the driver's waiting time and your luggage.
| Vehicle | Capacity | Fixed fare |
|---|---|---|
| Saloon | up to 4 passengers, 2 large cases | from £85 |
| MPV | up to 6 passengers, 4 large cases | from £105 |
| 8-seater | up to 7 passengers, 7 large cases | from £115 |
Per vehicle, not per person. Tolls, congestion and crossing charges are already inside the price, and it does not change on the day.
Meet and greet in arrivals at your terminal, or the designated private hire pickup if you prefer kerbside. Flights are tracked, so a delayed landing does not change the price and waiting time is included. Your driver sends the exact standing point and the registration before they set off, so you are not circling a car park looking for a number plate.
Address: Heathrow Airport, Hounslow, TW6.
Parking at Heathrow Airport is limited and the surrounding streets are metered or permit-only, so self-driving usually costs more in time than the fare saves. Being dropped at the door and collected at an agreed point removes the whole problem.
The road out of Strand is the part people tend to get wrong. The run is the Embankment and A4 west through Kensington, then the M4 to Junction 4, which is about 20.2 miles and 45 min on a clear road.
The part worth planning around is the Embankment and the Cromwell Road. That is where 45 min turns into 1h 10m, and it is why we publish a peak number instead of pretending every hour looks alike.
A straight westbound run along an empty river road.
If the road turns, the driver turns with it. The price you were quoted is the price either way.
Worth doing the sums rather than taking our word for it. From Strand the public transport route is the Piccadilly line from Covent Garden direct to the terminals, with no change at all, and it runs about 60 minutes station to terminal. The fare is about 5.60 pounds.
The car is 45 min off-peak and 1h 10m at its worst, door to door, from anywhere in WC2R, WC2N. Add the connections and the platform walks and the car is ahead before comfort even enters it.
The timetable hides two things. The first train is 05:05 from Covent Garden and the last is 00:10, which rules rail out for a large slice of what Heathrow Airport actually flies - the early bank needs you airside before the network wakes up. The second is luggage: the Piccadilly line has no luggage space worth the name and the Elizabeth line, while far better, still means a change and a walk at the London end.
Three is the number. Two travellers should take the train; three should not. The Saloon is a fixed fare of £85, or about £28 each between three.
Dropping off is the easy half. Heathrow has four working terminals spread over a large site and they are not interchangeable - Terminal 5 for British Airways, Terminal 2 for the Star Alliance carriers, Terminal 3 for Virgin and the oneworld partners, Terminal 4 for SkyTeam and much of the Gulf traffic. Give us the flight number and the driver takes the right ramp. Set-down is charged by the airport at every terminal and that charge is inside your fare.
Landing back, your driver waits at the short-stay car park at your terminal, in the bays marked for pre-booked cars, a level walk from arrivals. The exact bay and the registration reach you by text before you land, so there is no hunting along a rank and no call to a switchboard.
Sixty minutes of free waiting are included from touchdown, which is the honest figure once you allow for the walk from a T5 B or C gate and the border queue behind a bank of long-haul arrivals. You walk out to a car, which is the whole reason people book the return leg too.
We track the inbound flight number, so an early landing or a two-hour delay changes the driver's schedule and not your fare. Heathrow runs at full capacity almost every hour, so an inbound that loses its slot can sit for twenty minutes before a stand frees up. We track the aircraft rather than the timetable.
We cover the whole of Strand for this route: WC2R, WC2N. Homes, hotels, offices, hospitals and station forecourts all work as pickup points, and the fare from any of them is the one you were quoted.
Buildings with their own set-down are straightforward. Where there is not, the driver names a spot a few steps away that a car can legally stop in and messages you with it, rather than parking on a red route and hoping. It is a small thing, and it removes most of the stress from the first five minutes of a journey to Heathrow Airport.
The demand here comes from a handful of places in Strand: the Strand hotels, King's College and Somerset House, the Covent Garden theatres and the Aldwych offices. The result is a route that never fully quietens, which is why we cover it around the clock.
If you are collected near Somerset House, or anywhere else in WC2R, WC2N, it is the same fixed fare. One price across the borough, whatever the street looks like. Westminster City Council area, one price, quoted before you commit.
Heathrow Airport front-loads its day, and Strand feels that at four in the morning. A pre-dawn transfer behaves differently from the same trip at noon.
The roads are the easy part - A straight westbound run along an empty river road. What changes is everything around them. Night entrances replace main doors, barriers that are open by day are down, and a driver who has not been told which side of the block you are on will circle.
So we ask for the door, not just the postcode. The side entrance, the service road, the one with the step - that goes to the driver with the job. They message rather than ring a bell at four in the morning, and the free waiting time runs from the booked hour, not from whenever they happen to arrive.
The three vehicle classes are not a sales ladder, they are three different amounts of boot. A Saloon at £85 takes four passengers and two large cases. An MPV at £105 takes six and four large cases. An eight-seater at £115 takes seven and seven large cases.
The mistake is counting seats and forgetting the boot. Four adults with four large cases are an MPV booking whatever the seat count says. Tell us the bag count and we size it properly rather than sending a car that cannot close.
Child seats and boosters are free but need naming in advance, with the child's age, because the seat has to be fitted before the car leaves. Skis, bikes, instruments and wheelchairs all travel if you say so at booking. Parties over seven go in several vehicles routed together, so everyone reaches the same kerb within a minute of each other.
£85 in a saloon, £105 in a 6-seat MPV and £115 in an 8-seater. That is the fixed price, agreed at booking.
Door to door the car is about 45 min off-peak. The rail alternative is Charing Cross to Heathrow Airport plus the walk, which is competitive going out and considerably slower coming back.
Meet and greet in arrivals at your terminal, or the designated private hire pickup if you prefer kerbside. You get the exact point and the registration by text beforehand.
The driver waits. We watch venue finish times rather than working to a fixed clock, so a late curtain does not leave you stranded or cost you extra.
Yes, and it is the leg worth booking. The driver is in position before you come out instead of you joining the queue that forms the moment it ends.
Card, bank transfer or a business account, before or after the journey. A VAT receipt is issued either way.
No. The fare is fixed when you book. Traffic, tolls and the hour are our problem, not a line on your bill.
Twenty-four hours is comfortable and gets you the vehicle you asked for. Same-day works when a car is free, but the early slots out of Strand go first, so a 04:00 pickup is worth locking the night before.
That is the off-peak figure for the 20.2-mile run and it holds outside the rush. In the peak the same road is 1h 10m, mostly because of the Embankment and the Cromwell Road. We set the airport cutoff from the worse of the two, not the better one.
Nothing happens to the fare - it was fixed when you booked. If the road goes badly wrong the driver re-routes, and on an airport run we would rather you left Strand half an hour early than argue about whose fault the A-road was. Give us the flight time and we set the pickup from it.
Card, bank transfer or cash, and nothing is added at the end. The £85 Saloon fare from Strand covers the driver, the vehicle, tolls on the route, the terminal drop-off charge and any ULEZ charge, and the free waiting time. No meter, no booking fee at checkout, no surge at any hour.
Fares are fixed at booking and shown per vehicle. Distances and journey times are approximate and vary with traffic and the exact pickup address. Page reviewed 14 September 2026.