Why are airport transfers so expensive?

If you think the air fare you’ve paid is costly - wait until you try and leave the airport. For in many places around the world it’s common to feel fleeced when you get a taxi, bus or train to the centre of town.

In London, for example, research by air passenger compensation company flightright.co.uk found that Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and Luton airports have some of the most expensive airport train transfers in the world.

The Heathrow Express tops the list with single tickets costing £27 (38CHF) and returns £41 (58CHF) when bought on board, and £22 (31CHF) and £36 (51CHF) respectively for the 15 to 21-minute journey when bought online. It’s particularly galling bearing in mind that London to Basel flights with Ryanair start at £14.99 (21CHF). The Gatwick Express is £19.90 (28CHF) single and £34.90 (49CHF) return, with a small discount for booking online.

It is understandable to suspect that calling a train an ‘express’ gives licence to ramp up high fares, especially when you consider that there are dramatically cheaper options for these routes. For example, taking the Picadilly underground line from Heathrow to Picadilly takes around 45 minutes and costs from just £3.10 (4.40CHF) one way. With Gatwick, using the normal national rail service, which only takes a few minutes more than the Gatwick Express, is from under £8 (11CHF) one way using a London public transport travel card, the Oyster card.

Many people travelling expensively from airports must wonder whether the transport companies are taking advantage of them because of their lack of local public transport knowledge, time pressure and probable tiredness after a long flight. Especially those passeengers landing in Vancouver, where a surcharge is added to fares on the Skytrain unless you have a simple two-zone pass, as many locals do.

You would assume that buses would be cheaper

When it comes to taxis, Australia and New Zealand come out badly. A survey by New Zealand company Digital Hothouse found that airport taxi rides in Christchurch, Queenstown, Auckland and Wellington, and in Australia, in Perth and Sydney, all have amongst the world’s most expensive trips per kilometre. A survey by currency exchange company Moneycorp found that a taxi from Tokyo’s Narita airport to the city centre can cost almost £200 (31,000 JPY/283 CHF) (although it is a 66km trip). Unsurprisingly, Scandinavia is ruinously expensive too: the survey found the 8km trip to Copenhagen centre averaged £34.08 (323 DKK/48CHF).

A taxi from Oslo Gardermoen airport averages an eye-watering £73.45 (871NOK/104CHF). You would assume that buses would be cheaper - but not when there’s no train service, allowing bus operators to exploit their absence. Melbourne’s SkyBus service, for example, is AUS$19 (£9.63/13.65CHF) one way and AUS$38 (£19.27/27CHF) return, making it Australia’s most expensive public transport airport city link. In the UK, the Bristol bus service Flyer Express enjoys no competition from any train operators and perhaps this is a reason why it charges £7 (9.91CHF) from the airport to the city centre, nearly three times more than the cost of a bus journey to Birmingham Airport.

It all boils down to the fact that airport transportation is often exhorbitant simply because it can be. Airport travellers are captive. Most are on the road for business, and business travellers are a relatively time-sensitive and price-insensitive bunch. And, psychologically, the price may not appear such a shock when you’ve just been on a plane journey costing 10 or 20 times as much.

There are still extremely cheap options too

Bear in mind that airport public transport is often half-empty, especially when operating at regular intervals outside normal peak hours, such as the Gatwick Express, which runs every 15 minutes. This undoubtedly pushes up the price. The airport link you are taking may have been especially constructed, as great cost. For example, the Sydney airport link was built by a private company for the 2000 Olympics, and involved digging a 10km tunnel through a populated area, and cost nearly AUS$1 billion (£507m/718mCHF).

The good thing is that although there’s a long list of expensive airport transport links, there are still extremely cheap options too. easyBus, for example, offers airport transport to Gatwick, Stansted, Luton, Geneva and Paris CDG starting at around €2, while Berlin Schönefeld Airport trains to the city are just €3.30. Taxis from Sofia airport in Bulgaria to the city centre average around £2.20/5.50BGN (3.11CHF), and £4.80/27.78RON (6.80CHF) from Bucharest Airport in Romania.

But the best deal worldwide must be the public transport ticket offered at Geneva Airport. Dispensed from a machine in the baggage collection area at the arrival level, this Unireso ticket allows you to use public transport in Geneva completely for free for a period of 80 minutes.