Heathrow Express
Travel the smarter way by train between Heathrow and Paddington in Central London:- Journey planning and train timetables for travel between Heathrow and Paddington- View next Heathrow Express train time information from London Heathrow and Paddington- Buy tickets quickly on the go- Store all your train travel tickets on your smartphone- Save your preferred payment card details
Your account is now synced with our website so now you only need to enter your details once and benefit from a simpler and faster checkout, ticket purchase history and saved payment details.
We realise that service disruptions can be frustrating so we have improved the way in which we tell you about them.
You can also see straight away when the next trains are to London Paddington in Central London and to Heathrow.
Category : Travel & Local
Reviews (26)
App is pretty unreliable. Won't open without a network connection and the Heathrow Express WiFi mostly doesn't work. Sometimes lets you buy tickets, sometimes fails inexplicably. When you're travelling, you want the app holding your tickets to be robust and dependable. This is not that app. Suggest taking screenshots of your tickets in all cases. Update 1 year later: App still crashes occasionally during payment; works without needing constant internet connection though, which is an improvement
The latest app is absolutely shocking... the old app worked perfectly fine and was far more convenient. The idea of having to download tickets is a massive step backwards, why not hold them locally within the app like every other train app I've used, includ9ng the previous version of this one!! Sort it out fast as I use this to travel every week and its very frustrating!
A real regression from previous app. Tickets are now almost impossible to use. It isn't intuitive what you have to do to use a prepurchased (carnet) ticket. When you download the pdf, it is awkward trying to scan the small QR code from your phone. Even zooming in doesn't work and ends up having to get staff at gates to let you in. Apps like this are meant to improve your experience, not make it worse.
Worst upgrade! Purchased tickets are not stored in the app anymore??? I need to open in browser (which deep link does not even work) or save as PDF. How bad is this? Also, with the upgrade I lost all my previously added data like credit card and had to do it again (when you are used to purchase quickly while travelling on airport, not very convenient at all). Anybody thinking about customer experience over there?
Beware of the default settings. Easy to waste money here. The defaults are: travel today, open return, and Heathrow to Paddington. If you switch the direction of return travel and choose fixed dates, as many will, it defaults back to Heathrow to Paddington. So you have the right dates but are going the wrong way. The claim is new and improved (ways to book the wrong journey). Then try phoning customer service! Good luck with the endless wait for that.
Nonsense app. Clunky, very easy to book wrong tickets as defaults back to LHR to PAD when you change anything else, displays tickets in PDFs which auto rotate when you try to scan them plus it's not obvious there are multiple tickets in a single PDF. Can't get it to work with any of my credit cards so have to use PayPal. Like something out of the 90s.
Really Strongly Dislike App Ugrade!! It is a hugely backward step from the previous version!! It's really dreadful! It looks dreadful, it's visually confusing cos everything is purple + white & every page is designed exactly the same!! Awful!!! I really hope this is just a test period!! I use Heathrow Express a lot & this app 'upgrade' is terrible & so unintuitively designed!! Fire the app developer, rubbish!!
Just horrible. If you buy a carnet of tickets, it is very hard to figure out which ticket you have already used and you cannot mark a ticket as used. Instead of a visible check mark or cross, the app puts a tiny "Act" text label among the next of the ticket. It takes a long while to notice this, certainly not handy for people on the go. Because of this horrible UI, I wound up scanning 4 tickets on one journey an lost 60 gbp.
What on earth has happened to this app since 2020? It is a significant downgrade in functionality and ease of use. Incredibly, if you use the app to buy a ticket, you can no longer display the ticket on your device - only options are to download a PDF, share it or cancel it! So you have to use a generic PDF viewer to present the ticket to the electronic gate and fight to stop the screen rotating or scrolling. I'd love to hear from the product manager who decided to remove this feature.
Often crashes when used with unreliable internet such as London Underground or a seat on an aircraft. So this is not an easy way to grab a ticket on the way to the train. Also, the app should be used with a separate PDF viewer because you otherwise need to re-download tickets each time you view them and because there is patchy internet at the gates at Heathrow. However I still prefer this App to the panicked rush to buy a paper ticket.
New app meant I had to put all my card details in again and doesn't work offline despite the fact that there's only one route bookable. This meant I almost missed the train standing at the platform barriers, and of course they've shut the ticket offices so I had no way of booking my Heathrow staff ticket except in the app. Plus for some reason it won't let me register and keeps telling me my email isn't valid, but when I try to login with my old password it won't accept it, or let me reset it
This is eally not good enough, and an extremely bad advert for the country for visitors from abroad. I've read the other reviews and agree with all of the criticism. I too buy on line so that I have a paper copy too. Th most irritating is that it won't work offline; it drives me mad. I can't use the app when I'm overseas unless I happen to have WiFi and, to the developers, remember visitors to this country may not have a mobile data connection or WiFi when they arrive. THINK ABOUT YOUR USERS.
I can't understand how an app that worked really well previously can be so bad now it has been updated. Further it beggars belief that having installed automatic gates everywhere we have gone back to checking tickets on the train. Oh and the smaller more crowded trains at rush hour are no fun either. Currently frustrated with the whole Hex experience. Hopefully Crossrail will sharpen up the current unsatisfactory service.
This is a poor replacement from the original. Signup bad experience, downloading tickets in wrong order, and as pdf! Should be as a wallet pass like the previous version. I have now tried it since the update and these are my thoughts. In fact it takes longer to purchase and download tickets now!
This App is significantly worse than the previous version. It takes such a long time to get the train times. Shows incorrectly which tickets I have and not possible to delete incorrect tickets. Spoken to the staff and they said many people complain. Stopped buying tickets in the App and starting buying from the ticket machine in the station instead. So frustrating.
Convenient when it does work, but that's quite rare. More often you'll get a cryptic error message, or the details of what you're booking will change. Can't wait for the Elizabeth line so that this all becomes a thing of the past!
The old app and websites were old looking and clunky but the new redesigned app and website, even though more modern aesthetically, are functionally very bad. Problems with payments, impractical ticket management, an app that require periodic login because the session expires (and doesn't allow for copy and paste of login and password) and more. A real step back...
Absolute rubbish upgrade. Didn't save my credit card from previous app and won't accept it now. Can't book a carnet, nowhere to be found. Hopeless UI. Supplementary. Not a SINGLE ticket has ever worked at the barriers - usinfg this app. Protracted debat follow with heathrow personnel who seem resigned to this type of conversation. For the love of God sort this. AND when a ticket has been used PLEASE AUTOMATICALLY remove it from my app.
Clunky way to buy tickets. Lack of integration with Google Pay make it impossible to use one handed on the go (five steps to add payment information). Horrible idea to have to download a PDF ticket, surely there's a better way to visualise the barcode.
03/02/20 Just tried the App again took me nearly an to get it to 'take' and let me make a booking. It is OK if you've got an hour to waste,but there is no certainty you'll get a ticket. Best to use the online site. Don't bother with this App it is next to useless. Recently I bought two return tickets. On the return one of the tickets had disappeared from the making us miss a train whilst searching for the pdf copy email.
Entered all my info and got to where it was processing payment and the app crashed and exited. If it also charged my credit card then this thing deserves negative stars I wanted to add that it did indeed charge my card. I will see about getting a refund hopefully. Beware of this app!
Fairly clean experience. No reason to so quickly expire user credentials in an app. That needs to be fixed. Especially when the app doesn't allow for pasting a password. This is something that encourages a user to use a shorter, easier and thus less secure password. Ticket handling can be improved. Downloading off files for tickets is unnecessary and clunky.
Was already an awful, poorly functioning app. Now doesn't work if you have an unlocked bootloader... Since certain phones eg some OnePlus phones, come unlocked as default, and many other users unlock to use customised operating systems this was an idiotic move. Can't wait until crossrail makes hexpress and their useless app obselete.
In the new app the "my tickets" tab is not sorted by date, which means that if you have 40+ tickets like I do, you need to scroll up and down until finding the right one. Really basic stuff that should be sorted.
Slow, clunky, ticket failures. This app is incredibly slow and does not save your tickets in the app, it requires internet to retrieve PDF versions of your ticket. Underground with no signal? No ticket for you! Additionally, using "quick book" resets the direction to Paddington->Heathrow regardless of what you select on the setup screen. If you buy the wrong ticket (one way) the gates will not allow you through.
Generally a pain to use: less friendly and less flexible than the previous version. Full of stupid design mistakes like the barcode in landscape mode is too large for the screen - phone is likely to go into landscape while turning it over to show the code to the gate reader so it is rejected. I had to lock phone in portrait mode before I could get into the station, would have been a real problem if I was in a hurry. Please revert to the previous design!