Heathrow pick-up: where to wait and what it costs

Heathrow's forecourts are designated for drop-off only. Pick-up is not permitted, vehicles cannot be left unattended, and an unattended car may be towed. The published rule is unambiguous on the official passenger pick-up page: pick-ups should be made from a car park, not from the kerb.

The complication is that the ANPR cameras at the entry to each forecourt do not know whether you are dropping off or picking up. They read your plate and bill the visit at £7 either way, with the same 10-minute maximum stay and the same £80 Parking Charge Notice if you fail to pay by 23:59 the day after. The charge mechanism is identical to a drop-off and is covered in detail on the drop-off charges page.

What this means in practice. If your passenger is already standing outside with their bags when you reach the kerb, a brief stop to load them in works the same as a drop-off: £7, no longer than 10 minutes, drive away. If they are not out yet, you cannot wait on the forecourt; the only legitimate options are a car park or a circle of the perimeter road, the second of which will land you a second £7 if you re-enter the zone. The rest of this page covers what to do instead.

Every Heathrow terminal has a short-stay car park next to it, designed for exactly this case. The car parks are a 2-minute covered, step-free walk from the arrivals hall, signposted from the moment you enter the airport road network. They are open 24 hours.

Rates are tiered, with the first short bands close together and the longer ones spaced further apart. The figures below apply at all four terminals.

You take a ticket on entry and pay at a machine or at the exit gate before driving out. Stays under 9 hours cannot be pre-booked; the price is what the meter reads when you leave. Stays of 9 hours or more can be booked online up to 2 hours before arrival, sometimes at a small discount to the gate rate.

The short stay is the right call when the flight is on time and you want to wait inside, when you are travelling with more than one car-load of passengers to collect, or when the weather is bad and the indoor walk from car park to arrivals hall is worth more than the saving. It is also the only legitimate place to wait on site for an unannounced last-minute change. Full detail and the booking link are on the short-stay parking page.

The Park & Ride car park (formerly the Long Stay) is the free option for picking someone up, with the first 29 minutes free at every terminal site. Beyond 29 minutes the charge starts at £9.40 for up to 1 hour 59 minutes, which is still well under the short-stay rate. A free courtesy bus runs every 15 minutes between the Park & Ride and the terminal door, operating from 04:00 to 23:30. Outside those hours, transfers run on request by phoning 020 8745 6261; allow longer for the response.

The courtesy bus is bi-directional, which gives you two patterns for the pick-up.

Wait at the Park & Ride for the passenger to arrive on the bus

The driver parks at the Park & Ride and waits at the on-site bus stop. The passenger walks from arrivals to the Park & Ride bus stop on the terminal forecourt, takes the next courtesy bus, and arrives at the Park & Ride. Both get in the car and drive out. Total time in the car park is usually 15 to 25 minutes, which keeps you inside the free 29-minute window if the timing is broadly right.

Ride to the terminal to meet

The driver parks at the Park & Ride, takes the courtesy bus to the terminal, meets the passenger in the arrivals hall, and rides the bus back together. This is the more personal option, especially for a relative arriving from a long trip, but the two bus rides plus the meeting time will usually push you past the free 29 minutes and you will pay the £9.40 short-band rate. For most pick-ups, that is still cheaper than the short stay.

Layout by terminal

Terminals 2 and 3 share a Park & Ride site on the Eastern Perimeter Road, with the postcode TW6 2SB for sat nav. The courtesy bus visits both terminals, with separate pick-up bus stops in each forecourt. Terminal 4 has its own Park & Ride with its own bus, and since the T4 multi-storey closed for redevelopment on 23 June 2026 it is the only on-airport option there; its Zone A gives a longer free window of up to 2 hours. Terminal 5 has its own Park & Ride on the western side of the airport, again with its own bus. The arrangement mirrors the long-stay parking layout, since it is the same physical car park used for long stays of multiple days.

The right option depends on how long you expect to wait and how much value you place on being inside the terminal while you wait. Typical costs, current July 2026.

Park & Ride 1 hour 59 minutes is the upper bound of the £9.40 band. Beyond that the rate climbs but stays under the short stay for any plausible pick-up.

The numbers say the Park & Ride wins on cost in every realistic scenario, by between £8 and £10.60 against the short stay. What you trade is the 15-minute bus ride at each end and the slightly more involved logistics of meeting in two places. Where the short stay wins is convenience and certainty: a 2-minute indoor walk to a definite spot, with full control over when you arrive and leave. For a routine pick-up of a partner with hand luggage, the Park & Ride is the better deal. For the elderly grandparent with three cases on a delayed flight, the short stay is worth £10.60.

The basic layout is the same at every terminal: a short-stay car park next to the building, and a Park & Ride further out with a courtesy bus. The differences are in walking routes and Park & Ride sharing.

Terminal 2

Short Stay Car Park 2 is alongside the terminal, with a covered walk-way to the arrivals hall on the lower level. The Park & Ride is shared with Terminal 3, on the Eastern Perimeter Road, postcode TW6 2SB. The courtesy bus stops at both terminals, with the T2 stop in the forecourt clearly marked. Terminal 2 is the Star Alliance terminal, so the arriving passenger is most likely on a United, Lufthansa, or Air Canada flight.

Terminal 3

Short Stay Car Park 3 is the matched pair to T2 and sits between the two terminals; the walk to T3 arrivals is short and signposted. The Park & Ride is the same shared site as T2. Terminal 3 handles Virgin Atlantic, American Airlines, and several oneworld carriers, plus some Cathay Pacific and Emirates services.

Terminal 4

The Terminal 4 multi-storey closed on 23 June 2026 for redevelopment, so pick-ups at Terminal 4 use the T4 Park & Ride on Scylla Road, where Zone A next to the reception is free for up to 2 hours and the shuttle runs every 5 minutes. The site is separate to the T2 and T3 one, with its own courtesy bus. The terminal is the SkyTeam hub at Heathrow, so most arrivals are on KLM, Air France, Korean Air, or Qatar Airways. T4 is the most physically isolated of the four terminals; the drive in from the M25 is on a separate spur road.

Terminal 5

Short Stay Car Park 5 sits opposite Terminal 5, with a covered pedestrian bridge over the road into the arrivals level. The Park & Ride is on the western side of the airport, with its own courtesy bus to T5 only. Almost all arrivals at T5 are on British Airways or Iberia. If you are collecting from one of the satellite buildings (T5B or T5C), the passenger will still come through the main T5 arrivals hall after taking the internal transit train, so the meeting point is the same.

Two different things, often confused. The pick-up zone is where the car goes, which is either the short-stay car park or the Park & Ride. The meeting point is where you and your passenger physically meet, which is inside the arrivals hall, in a clearly signed waiting area. Each terminal has at least one official meeting point, marked on the airport's own maps.

Most pick-ups use both. The driver parks in the pick-up zone, walks to the arrivals hall, finds the meeting point, waits for the passenger to come through, and walks back to the car together. Co-ordinating by text helps: the passenger sends an "I have my bags" message when they are walking out of baggage reclaim, and the driver moves to the meeting point. The dedicated meeting points page covers exactly where each terminal's meeting area is.

The distinction matters most when you are collecting someone who needs help. A passenger with mobility assistance is brought from the gate to a specific assistance area in the arrivals hall, not to the general meeting point; the family or driver collecting them should agree the assistance meeting spot in advance. For unaccompanied minors, the airline staff hand the child over at a defined desk rather than the meeting point, so check the airline's procedure when you book.

The single biggest cause of pick-up stress is arriving too early and having to wait an unknown length of time. The fix is to track the actual flight, not the scheduled one, and to set off from home when the timing is known rather than guessed.

A reasonable rule of thumb for how long after touchdown a passenger reaches the arrivals hall:

• International long-haul: 60 to 90 minutes. 15 to 20 to taxi and disembark, 15 to 45 at passport control depending on eGate queues, 20 to 30 at baggage reclaim, plus the walk out.
• International short-haul: 45 to 60 minutes. Shorter passport queues, similar baggage timing.
• Domestic UK flights: 20 to 30 minutes. No passport control and bags often arrive within 15 minutes.
• Hand luggage only: knock 20 to 30 minutes off any of the above. The walk from gate to arrivals hall can be as little as 10 minutes if the gate is close to immigration.

Live flight status is on the airline's app, on flight trackers such as Flightradar24, or on the airport's own arrivals page. The "estimated" arrival time updates as the flight progresses and is more useful than the scheduled time, which can be hours stale on a long-haul. The right cue to leave home is landed plus 30 minutes for international, or landed plus 10 minutes for domestic; that lands you in the car park at roughly the same moment the passenger walks out.

Delays come in two flavours, with very different effects on a pick-up. Air-side delays happen in the air or on the apron and the flight tracker will show the new arrival time more or less accurately. Gate-side delays happen after landing, in immigration queues or at baggage belts that take longer than they should, and the tracker shows "landed" but the passenger is still on the wrong side of the gate. The first kind is easy to plan around; the second is the one that catches you.

If a delay is announced before you have left home, the right move is almost always to delay leaving. A flight running 90 minutes late is still going to land, and arriving at the airport on time to wait 90 minutes serves no one. The exception is when a delay is small and uncertain, where landing on time is more likely than not, and the cost of being late to a tired passenger outweighs the parking fee.

If you are already on the airport road network when the gate-side delay materialises, the short-stay car park is the safe bet: a 1 to 2 hour band at £20 covers most realistic situations and you can stay inside the terminal until the passenger appears. If you are in the Park & Ride and your 29-minute clock is running out, you can either exit and re-enter the car park (which resets the clock but adds time) or pay the £9.40 band and stop worrying. There is no good case for sitting on the forecourt; the ANPR will keep charging the £7 every time you re-enter, and unattended cars are towed.

For any flight where a delay turns into a cancellation or a long disruption, your passenger may end up with rights under UK 261 or EU 261; the arrivals page covers the passenger side and the wider rules sit on the passenger-rights page.

You do not have to drive to the airport yourself. Many people booking a pick-up are weighing the cost of their own time, fuel, and car park fees against the price of a taxi to do the same trip. For a single passenger coming from outside London, the maths often favours the taxi.

The licensed black cab rank is on the arrivals forecourt at each terminal, fed from a holding yard on the perimeter. Black cabs do not need to be booked; the passenger walks out, joins the rank, and takes the next available cab. The driver pays any forecourt charges; the cost is in the meter. For pre-booked private hire, the driver collects from the short-stay car park rather than the kerb, again for the same reason: forecourt waiting is not allowed.

Uber and other ride-hailing services have their own designated pick-up zone in the short-stay car park at each terminal, signposted from arrivals. The passenger walks from the arrivals hall to the marked ride-hail area; the driver waits there. Booking is the same as anywhere else in London, and the fare in the app includes the car park entry fee the driver pays. The Uber at Heathrow page covers the exact pick-up locations and any current variations by terminal.

A handful of details that make the difference between a pick-up that takes 25 minutes and one that takes an hour.

• Agree the meeting point in advance. "Meet me at the meeting point" is not enough; "Meeting point A near the Costa, Terminal 5 arrivals" is. Texts often arrive late in arrivals halls, so settle this on the ground before they fly.
• Open the flight tracker before you leave the house. The estimated arrival time is the only number that matters. Five minutes spent checking saves an hour parked at the airport.
• Pick the right car park first time. Re-entering means paying again at the short stay, or restarting the clock at the Park & Ride. The terminal sign-posting is good once you are inside the airport road network; trust it.
• Use the right Heathrow postcode for sat nav. Each terminal has its own and the wrong one routes you to the opposite side of the airport. The postcode page lists them by terminal.
• Allow for assistance services if the passenger is using them. Mobility assistance is reliable but not instant; an arriving passenger using the PRM service typically reaches the arrivals hall 30 to 45 minutes after disembarkation rather than the usual figure.
• Pay the car park before you walk back. Pay-on-foot machines are scattered through each car park and the queue at the exit can be longer than the wait at the meeting point.
• Mind the wider road charges. If you are driving through inner London on the way, the ULEZ and Congestion Charge rules apply on top of any Heathrow parking. The full driving picture is on the getting to Heathrow hub, with parking spread across the parking pages.