Buses to UK airports
36 UK airports with a bus or coach to the terminal — how long the journey takes, when the first and last bus leaves the airport, and which ones you can reach in the middle of the night.
Airports by bus routes
- Heathrow Airport 128 routes 85 at night London
- Luton Airport 38 routes 22 at night South East England
- Gatwick Airport 34 routes 30 at night South East England
- Manchester Airport 33 routes 16 at night North West England
- Stansted Airport 30 routes 14 at night South East England
- Edinburgh Airport 16 routes 13 at night Scotland
- Birmingham Airport 12 routes 10 at night West Midlands
- Liverpool John Lennon Airport 10 routes 4 at night North West England
- Newcastle Airport 10 routes 3 at night North East England
- Bristol Airport 9 routes 6 at night South West England
- Glasgow Airport 9 routes 4 at night Scotland
- Southampton Airport 8 routes 2 at night South West England
- Inverness Airport 6 routes 1 at night Scotland
- Biggin Hill Airport 5 routes London
- Blackpool Airport 5 routes North West England
- Cambridge Airport 5 routes East of England
- East Midlands Airport 5 routes 5 at night East Midlands
- Glasgow Prestwick Airport 5 routes 1 at night Scotland
Smaller airports and airfields
Fewer than 5 routes each. Some are general-aviation fields rather than passenger airports — they appear because a bus route passes the terminal.
How this is put together
Bus timetables have no concept of an airport, so we take NaPTAN's airport interchange nodes — the official survey of where an airport's terminals are — and find the bus stops that belong to them. Where an airport has a locality of its own that is used directly, which is what keeps Heathrow's four kilometres from Terminal 5 to Terminal 4 as one airport. Elsewhere we take stops named for the terminal within a kilometre of it.
Journey times are the median end-to-end run for each route, read from the operator's own published timetable — the median rather than the average because a handful of peak journeys on most airport routes carry padded running time that would drag an average well past the real trip. First and last times are departures from the airport, not from the route's first stop.
Frequently asked questions
Which UK airports can you reach by bus?
Most of them. We list 36 UK airports with at least two bus or coach routes serving the terminal, from Heathrow with over a hundred down to single-route island airports. Airports with no scheduled bus at all are not listed.
Is the bus cheaper than the train to the airport?
Almost always, and often by a lot — but it is usually slower and more affected by traffic. Local buses to airports in England fall under the £3 single fare cap; dedicated airport coaches are priced separately and are cheapest booked in advance.
Can I get a bus to the airport for an early flight?
Sometimes. 19 of the 36 airports here have at least one route running in the small hours, and a few have 24-hour services. Each airport page shows the first departure from the terminal on a weekday and which routes run overnight.
Timetables from operators via the DfT Bus Open Data Service and Translink, rebuilt weekly. Irish airports are not listed — NaPTAN covers Great Britain only. See also night buses, buses to railway stations and all bus routes.