Travelling on overnight services to Gatwick Friday 21st - bus replacement - what can I expect?

[Alex-JER/LGW]

Hi All,

Need to catch an easyJet flight from Gatwick at 6am tomorrow (Friday).
Just been on both National Rail and Thameslink website to check and can see that the overnight services departing East Croydon at 03:07 & 04:07 are both showing as cancelled, however it does highlight replacement bus running at 03:22 and 04:22 to Gatwick.
I just rang GTR to query this as I am understandably nervous that this will add to the stress of getting to Gatwick and they knew nothing about these replacement buses and said to trust both the websites information.
Can anyone offer any insight into the position here?
Worried that the bus may never turn up.

Thanks

 

[driverd]

From experience, the overnight airport runs are usually pretty busy. The busses will likely turn up so I wouldn't worry about that, however, I would strongly recommend arriving in good time at the station to allow for bus early running and/or the bus getting full.

Others can probably advise, but isn't East Croydon staffed 24 hours, so you'll have a point of contact if there are problems?

 

[IslandDweller]

Which site have you used to determine that these are cancelled? The places I have checked don't show any planned cancellations.

 

[Cross City]

Which site have you used to determine that these are cancelled? The places I have checked don't show any planned cancellations.

I can see that they're both cancelled on Darwin.

The 0207 is still due to run so maybe OP can see if they can catch that one instead if they're concerned.

 

[Jan Mayen]

I would strongly advise the OP to travel earlier to avoid the bus. The one time I got caught up in this, the bus that showed up was a single decker. I got on at Blackfriars, and got out at East Croydon as my journey wasn't time critical - the bus left other people behind.
I ended up getting a train back to Blackfriars (rather than hang about East Croydon) then a train to Three Bridges.

 

[Alex-JER/LGW]

Thanks all, definitely going to catch the 0207 and try to sleep when I get through security at Gatwick.Not worth the hassle of a full bus turning up at East Croydon and being unable to board.

I understand that this can happen from time to time, however the contingency of a bus Vs 12 car train for all those travelling to Gatwick for early flights seems inadequate.I travel frequently for these flights and those overnight Thameslink departures are always fairly well loaded to Gatwick with travellers.