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Getting from Birmingham airport to London

SusanSeattle

100+ Posts
So we bit the bullet and bought four plane tickets yesterday for our summer trip. It was complicated because I'm flying out earlier for a trip with my Mom, and then my husband and kids are meeting me for our family trip. Our daughter has a competition in Atlanta right before the trip so she and my husband will be flying from there. Our 16 yo son is taking his first solo flight and meeting me a day before the other 2. Son and I are flying from Seattle

Ticket prices were crazy (1650 - 1800 depending on when I looked), and over 2k for a direct flight on BA) but we discovered that we could buy one way tickets for less than the same round trip flights, and for my flight and my sons, we also saved a few hundred dollars by flying into Birmingham airport. All of this craziness got us tickets that were around $1300. We're flying Iceland air.

Looking online, I see I can take a train right from the Birmingham airport into London Euston. I'm hoping someone else who has experience with the Birmingham airport, and perhaps the train can give me pointers.

We're only flying into Birmingham, we'll fly home from Glasgow.
 
www.thetrainline.com is good for looking at train routes and fares. I buy my tickets on that site.

I see direct trains from Birmingham Airport to London Euston. Am I by mistake searching in an alternate universe? The fares are really cheap and the journey takes either 1hr 17min or 2hours. This can't be right. Okay, the cheap fares were for night-time trains, but they are still reasonable during the day. Those journey times can't be right. Everyone has been going on and on about a new high-speed train from London to Birmingham that will take 2 hours.

@jonathan @Panda ????

My answer is obvious - I know nothing about trains from Birmingham to London. My big plan for this year is to visit Birmingham for the first time (and it is only an hour north of us).
 
This is what I saw about the new rail line (the HS2)
"The Department for Transport says the project will cut Birmingham-London journey times from 1hr 21min to 49min. "
I thought 1hr 21 was pretty good to start with!
 
All the money they are going to spend on HS2 (and tear up the countryside) to save 30 minutes on a trip!

But, this means those times make sense. Stroud, where we live, is closer to London than Birmingham and it takes 90 mins to get there by train.
 
I haven't flown in or out of there but have used the relevant station, Birmingham International, because it also serves the big National Exhibition Centre. ( NEC) Good station, with a little automatic shuttle called the AirRailLink that smoothly joins up the airport, NEC and the rail station. Just try to get the fast London train - the 2 hour stops everywhere.

The station that serves Birmingham city centre is Birmingham New Street, btw
 
Just a quick update about our experiences flying into Birmingham. It worked out really well. It took about 20 minutes for deplaning, going through immigration, and picking up our luggage. Our flights from Iceland were only about 1/3 full. We were able to spread out & get a little more sleep on this leg of the trip. Most of the people at passport control were EU citizens and the non-EU line was really short.
The train to London was also easy. There is a free shuttle train from the airport to Birmingham intl. station which only -takes a few minutes. We caught the fast Virgin train to London, arriving at London Euston. We bought off-peak tickets ahead of time, a day of ticket would be 38 pounds. Can't remember what our tickets cost, but it was way less than that. The fast Virgin trains and the slow Midlands train leave from the same track, so be sure and catch the right one!

London Euston is a very busy station. There is an underground stop right in the station. My mom and I took a taxi, very easy, lots of taxis waiting at the taxi rank. My son and I took the underground, it was mid day so wasn't too crowded.

I'd fly into Birmingham again. It was much faster than Heathrow!
 

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