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Luton Airport Parkway to London Gatwick Airport

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AllensWest

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20 Dec 2017
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Hi,
Forgive me for my ignorance, however I’m far from a rail expert and I’ve never used either of the stations/airports in question but some bargain flights for August to Turkey (£50 return) made this trip impossible not to book.

My problem is the flight leaves Gatwick and returns to Luton so I’m looking to travel between to two airports on a weekday overnight as the departing flight leaves Gatwick at 05:15. I’ll arrive at Luton Airport Parkway station and park the car there for 10 days around 00:00, paying for parking prior to arriving.

Basically can somebody tell me if I’m correct in thinking you can tap in at Luton airport parkway with contactless and out at Gatwick airport? This comes up as £15ish on tfl fare finder however a paper ticket costs nearly £30 is this correct? Also if anyone has any tips or experience using the said car park and overnight thameslink services that would be much appreciated.

Hopefully everything will be back to near normal in July.
 
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BluePenguin

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Just curious, where abouts in Turkey? I am planning to visit my family in Antalya this August
 

Paul Kelly

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This comes up as £15ish on tfl fare finder however a paper ticket costs nearly £30 is this correct?
Yes, some of the longer-distance contactless fares are fantastic value if you're only making a single journey, since they tend to be priced at roughly half the price of a day return, whereas a paper single tends to be priced at just 10p less!
 

AllensWest

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20 Dec 2017
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Looking at the Dalaman area, not booked anything yet as I'm not sure we will be able to travel due to the pandemic.

Thanks for the help guys, great value using contactless. Hopefully the over night trains are running on said date. We will only need to get back to parkway station on return into Luton, so we will use the shuttle bus to do so assuming it runs 24/7.
 

plugwash

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29 May 2015
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Basically can somebody tell me if I’m correct in thinking you can tap in at Luton airport parkway with contactless and out at Gatwick airport? This comes up as £15ish on tfl fare finder however a paper ticket costs nearly £30 is this correct?
I see know reason to distrust TFLs fare finder for a ticketing system operated by TFL.

The large price discrepancy may seem surprising, but you have to remember that journeys like yours are the exception not the rule. Most journeys are return journeys and for shorter journeys mostly returning the same day.

Traditionally off-peak single tickets in the UK have been poor value, often being only slightly cheaper than the cheapest return ticket and/or only slightly cheaper than an anytime single. On Luton to Gatwick an off-peak single ticket is £29.60, compared to an anytime single ticket at £31.60 and an off peak day return at £29.70.

Oyster/contactless PAYG fares* on the other hand are always single fares, usually priced at roughly half the corresponding paper day return. If they priced them much higher than that few people would use the system.

Further complicating matters, rail tickets can have a wide variety of different peak/off-peak rules, whereas as far as I can tell TFL use a standard definition across the system. TFLs morning peak starts later than the paper tickets on this route, but the paper tickets on this route seem to have no relavent evening peak restrictions.

The net result of this is that for typical journeys oyster/contactless is about the same price as a paper ticket, but for some journeys (e.g. single journeys) it can be significiantly cheaper and for others it can be significantly more expensive.

* In this particular case you can only use contactless, not oyster, because oyster is not accepted at Luton airport parkway.
 
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