Leaving money on the table: you can use Railcards for Heathrow Express, too
/I was playing around doing some research for my recent posts on my trip to the United Kingdom and made a discovery that left me equally pleased (that I get to share it with you) and frustrated (that I didn’t realize it at the time): you can and should use Railcards on the nonstop Heathrow Express service between London’s Paddington Station and Heathrow airport. It’s not exactly “tricky,” but you do need to know what to look out for.
As a brief refresher, Railcards offer savings on all National Rail services in Scotland, England, and Wales. They can be purchased online in advance, are typically valid for between one and three years, and they are virtually never checked by conductors on-board (although supposedly if you get caught without the applicable Railcard you have to pay a “penalty fare” or buy a full-price ticket).
My error was simple, although hopefully readers will find it excusable: Heathrow Rail, despite only operating a single 15-minute route between two stations, still belongs to National Rail, and consequently Railcard savings do apply to these tickets — and the savings can be substantial.
Add your Railcard on the Heathrow Express search results page
Unlike the other National Rail booking engines I looked at, which allow you select your Railcard up front, Heathrow Express’s own booking page only allows you to add a Railcard after searching for tickets. You’ll find the option on the right-hand column of the search results page:
Adding a Two Together Railcard to a £50 one-way itinerary reduced the price by £17 — over half the price of the Railcard itself, meaning the Railcard would pay for itself with a single round-trip ticket for two at that price.
Since Railcards offer a percentage discount, the savings are naturally lower on cheaper tickets booked further in advance, but the point is the same: if you’re traveling by rail in Great Britain, it’s simply irresponsible to do it without a Railcard!
Heathrow Express tickets can be booked through some (but not all) National Rail companies
In my previous post I highlighted how each National Rail booking engine differs in subtle ways, including how accurately they code the precise requirements for each Railcard. The example I used was that Greater Anglia correctly requires a child ticket to be added to a reservation in order to apply the Family & Friends Railcard, while Avanti West Coast would price out the discount with an itinerary consisting solely of adults (violating the requirements for that Railcard).
Once I realized Heathrow Express participated in National Rail, I naturally wondered if tickets could be booked through those other booking engines. The answer, it turns out, is “sometimes.” Greater Anglia and Northern Railway (which seem to share a backend, with only a modestly different branding), will not apply a Family & Friends Railcard to Heathrow Rail booking at all, but will apply a Two Together Railcard (I have a theory for this I’ll explain in a moment). Avanti West Coast will show schedules, but will not allow you to book Heathrow Express tickets at all.
When you can (and can’t) book Family & Friends Railcard tickets on Heathrow Express
It’s going to sound obvious once I say it, but it took me a few minutes to figure out so I hope you’ll indulge me: children under the age of 16 ride free on Heathrow Express (although they seemingly must be accompanied by an adult). That means when the third-party National Rail engines try to validate the conditions for the Family & Friends Railcard on Heathrow Express, it fails the requirement to purchase a children’s ticket!
Fortunately, when booking through Heathrow Express directly, they seem to have identified and fixed this issue. To test this, pick a date and search for 4 adults without a Railcard, 4 adults with a Family & Friends Railcard, and 4 adults plus one child with a Family & Friends Railcard.
In the first two cases the price is the same (because the Railcard’s conditions aren’t met), and in the third case the base price won’t increase (because children ride free) but the conditions of the Railcard are now met and the price drops by the expected 34%.
Conclusion
It would be tiresome to say that this illustrates the importance of interrogating systems by looking under the hood and examining how they really work instead of relying on the nonsense put out by their public-facing organs.
Instead, I’ll simply conclude that entry and exit from the Heathrow Express is automated, and no one is there to check whether you actually have a child, or a Railcard.
