About PlanMyFlight

A guide to each airport. Each airport we cover has a page with what has been checked on drop-off charges, parking, security and bags, where it came from, and the date we read it. Every airport we cover.

Two planners. Catching a flight: the planner on the homepage tells you when to leave home. Picking someone up: the pick-up planner tells you when to set off to meet an arriving flight.

Live departure and arrival boards. What is leaving and landing in the next twelve hours at the airports we have boards for, from commercial flight data rather than the airport’s own screens.

Flying out. You give us your flight and where you are setting off from. We take the flight’s scheduled departure, work back to when you should be inside the terminal, make sure that is before bag drop usually closes, then subtract a few minutes to drop off and your traffic-aware drive time. What’s left is the time to leave home.

Picking someone up. You give us the arriving flight and where you are setting off from. We start from its latest arrival estimate, add our allowance for them to leave the aircraft, clear the border if there is one and collect any bag, then take away your traffic-aware drive and a few minutes to reach the pick-up area. The answer is when to set off.

We do not operate vehicles, employ drivers, or take payment for journeys. We are not a taxi firm, a private hire operator, an airport transfer company, a meet-and-greet service or a parking company, and nothing here implies a Private Hire licence. A departures result may carry an advert for an independent company that sells transfers for the far end of your trip. You book and pay it directly, and any contract or complaint is with it or the company it books for you, not with us: we don’t book, run or take payment for any journey.

Flying out, short-haul: 90 minutes before departure with cabin bags only, 120 with a checked bag. Long-haul: 150 and 180. Where the airport’s own website asks for longer, we use the airport’s figure instead (most UK airports say at least 2 hours). These are planning numbers, not a live security queue — we can’t see today’s queues, and we never promise you’ll clear security by a given time. Your airline’s own check-in and gate times are the ones that count.

Picking someone up, from landing to the kerb: about 20 minutes for a domestic or Irish arrival, 30 for other short-haul flights and 42 for long-haul, plus 15 for a checked bag, which we assume after a long-haul flight unless you untick it. These are allowances for the kind of flight, not a live reading of passport control or the baggage belt.

Flying out: if your flight is running late we show it, but we don’t move your leave time. Bag drop usually still closes on the schedule.

Picking someone up is the other way round. The planner follows the live arrival estimate, so a late flight means a later time to set off. A result left open on screen checks again from time to time, more often as landing gets closer, and updates itself.

Flights departing from, or arriving at, UK and Irish airports, with a driving start point.

Nothing. There is no account, no sign-up and no payment. Every page carries an advert for an independent company, always labelled “Ad”; if you book through one we earn a commission, and it doesn’t change your price. Our advertising page sets out the lot, including the things money is not allowed to change.

Departure times come from AeroDataBox, a commercial flight-data provider, or from the time you type in yourself. For a pick-up, flight positions and arrival estimates come from commercial flight-data providers. Drive times come from a traffic-aware routing service. Any airport details we show carry a link to their source and the date we last checked them. Our tables of drop-off charges and liquid rules are free to reuse with credit: our data page has them as JSON and CSV files.

Every fact in an airport guide comes from that airport’s own website, or from a named official operator such as its rail or bus company. Rules that are the same at every UK airport, such as ID, come from GOV.UK and are labelled as national rules.

Each answer quotes the airport’s own words and links the page they are on, with the date we read it. A fact is shown only once a second check has found those words on that page. Where two of the airport’s pages say different things we show both, and where the airport doesn’t publish something we say so rather than guess. A check more than three months old is marked as such.

The guides are independent: not run by or connected to any airport. If an answer has changed, tap “Spotted a change?” under it. We check every report against the airport’s own website before we change anything.

Wrong result, out-of-date airport details or a question — the contact form reaches us directly.