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Flying from Heathrow out of Nottingham? Get the terminal right

Heathrow's four terminals are miles apart and airlines move between them. Here is a Nottingham traveller's guide to landing at the right door first time.

2026-05-05 · 5 min read

After a three-hour drive from Nottingham, the last thing you want is to be dropped at Terminal 3 when your flight leaves from Terminal 5. It happens more than you would think, because airlines move terminals and booking confirmations do not update.

The four active terminals

Terminal 2 — the Queen's Terminal. Star Alliance home: Lufthansa, United, Air Canada, Singapore Airlines, Turkish Airlines, ANA, Aer Lingus, Eurowings, plus smaller carriers like LOT and Croatia Airlines.

Terminal 3. A oneworld and SkyTeam mix: American Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Qantas, Japan Airlines, Finnair, Delta, Emirates and some Virgin Atlantic routes.

Terminal 4. SkyTeam long-haul plus outliers: KLM, Air France, Etihad, Qatar Airways, Malaysia Airlines, China Eastern, Vietnam Airlines. Physically detached from the central terminal area.

Terminal 5. British Airways almost exclusively, plus Iberia. If you are on a BA long-haul, you are almost certainly at T5.

Terminal 1 closed in 2015 and still appears in some sat-nav databases. Ignore it entirely.

Getting between terminals if you get it wrong

All four are linked by free Heathrow Express and Elizabeth line services. Allow 20 minutes between T5 and T4 — they sit at opposite ends of the site — and 10 to 15 between the central terminals. That is 20 minutes you will not have on a morning long-haul.

How we prevent it

When you book, we ask for your flight number. On the day of travel we pull the live flight record, which carries the current terminal, and pass it to your driver. If the airline moved you from T3 to T2 six weeks after you booked, the driver still takes you to the right door.

If you do not have a flight number — a lot of people book transfers before ticketing — book anyway and add it later from your confirmation email. The fare does not change.

Timing from Nottingham

Plan three hours of driving overnight, three and a half in the day, then three hours at check-in for long-haul. A 07:00 departure from T5 is a midnight pick-up from Nottingham. There is no comfortable version of that flight, only a prepared one.

Coming home

Arrivals halls differ by terminal, and T4 in particular is a walk from anywhere else. Tell us the terminal, or give us the flight number and we will work it out. We track the inbound and airport pick-ups include an hour of grace time. Meet and greet, if you want a driver in arrivals with a board, is charged once on the airport-pickup leg only.

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