London City Airport to Southampton

[Alaskanb]

Today I took the plunge and changed our AA award flights from ELP to London in late October. We now will be on AA from ELP to DFW to FRA then on BA from FRA to London City Airport. The flight times are much better for us and we have a huge savings in taxes! 🙂

Two questions:

1. What will we go through in terms of immigration etc in Frankfurt?
2. Any recommendations of a car service from LCY to Southampton? I have a quote from a company called Twelve but I know nothing about them. 

Thanks so much. 

[fbgd]

Frankfurt/Germany is within Schengen whereas the UK isn't. Ordinarily you would need to clear Schengen exit immigration controls, however, as your flight is arriving from the US you may be able to avoid any immigration. It depends whether your DFW arrival forces you to clear Schengen entry controls, which to be honest I doubt. I've only connected through FRA on the SQ service that operates from JFK-SIN and that had no security or immigration. 

 

LCY to Southampton is a pretty awful drive even if someone else is doing the hard work. I'd personally take the Underground from LCY to Waterloo, book FC tickets to Southampton Central and be done with it.  It's around 75-90mins on the train. 

[Globaliser]

There's lots of good information about connecting at FRA here: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/lufthansa-austrian-swiss-brussels-lot-other-partners-miles-more/982019-beginners-guide-connecting-fra-fra-connection-thread.html

 

In short, as it sounds like you're on one ticket for the whole journey, your bags should go through to LCY. At FRA, you will be a T2-T2 connection, which is easy. There should be no immigration. Expect to need to clear security before going to the next gate, but you may be pleasantly surprised. Also, expect that a bus will take you from the gate to the FRA-LCY aircraft; I think that's normal for those flights.

 

You are likely to be pleasantly surprised at the speed and ease of getting out of LCY.

 

If you want to do the public transport thing, then you need to take the DLR to Canning Town. As you will have luggage, take a train that's heading for Bank (ie not a Stratford train). This is because at Canning Town, you then need only go down one level to the Jubilee Line platform, which will be directly beneath. Take the Jubilee Line to Waterloo, then go up to the main line concourse and take the next fast train to Southampton. All of these changes are step-free (both escalators and lifts), so it's very easy if you can manage your luggage.

 

If you do take a car, you could see whether the driver would be prepared to take one of the routes that I would take: either Blackwall Tunnel --> A2 --> M25 --> M3, or A13 --> Dartford Crossing --> M25 --> M3. Neither is as scenic as going through the middle of London, but going through the middle of London is likely to be bad for your blood pressure.

 

One local minicab company that I use is Commercial Cars, so you could give them a try for a quote. It's possible that one of the London airport transfer specialists might do this job (although they're really more interested in trips to London destinations from London airports). Or you could try one of the usual Southampton-area people because for them it'll only be a little different from a trip to Heathrow or Gatwick.

[waterbug123]

We used a company called Totally Driven to get from Southampton to LHR. 

totallydriven.co.uk

 

[Alaskanb]

Thank you all so much. We will simply modify our existing booking with Smiths for Airports.