Gatwick Airport taxi | Fixed fares | U Want Taxi

Gatwick has two terminals, North and South, a mile or so apart and linked by a shuttle transit system rather than being walkable. South Terminal is the older of the two and has the airport's main railway station attached to it, along with most of the leisure and charter airlines; North Terminal handles easyJet's Gatwick base along with Virgin Atlantic and a number of others.

The drive down from our coverage area runs via the M25 to Junction 7, then the M23 south to Junction 9, joining the A23 for the last stretch into the airport. It's a longer, more motorway-heavy run than the Heathrow trip, and the M25/M23 interchange is the one place on the route that reliably slows down at peak times, more so than the final approach into the airport itself.

Slough to Gatwick is £55 for a saloon or £75 for an executive car, fixed regardless of which terminal you're using, since the shuttle link means the difference between North and South adds only a couple of minutes either way. An airport-to-airport transfer between Heathrow and Gatwick — useful if you've got a connecting flight out of the other one — is £60 saloon or £82 executive.

Knowing which terminal you're flying from matters more at Gatwick than it does at some airports, because the two are far enough apart that a driver told the wrong one will add the shuttle transfer time onto your journey rather than just a short walk. We confirm the terminal at booking, not just "Gatwick", so there's no ambiguity when the car arrives at the right forecourt.

Both terminals have a short-stay drop-off directly outside, with the same kind of charge after a few minutes that most airports now apply, and a free long-stay area a short drive from each terminal that we use for anything other than an immediate drop.

Flight tracking applies at Gatwick the same as anywhere else — the driver works from your actual flight number, so a delay doesn't leave you standing outside an empty terminal building, and an early landing doesn't leave the car circling for half an hour either.

South Terminal's railway station sits beneath the terminal building itself, with a covered walkway straight into check-in, which makes it a useful landmark even for road pickups — we tell drivers to head for the station side of South Terminal rather than the general terminal frontage, since that's where the short-stay bays sit closest to the arrivals doors.

North Terminal's arrivals hall serves a number of gates reached by an internal transit train rather than a walk, so a flight landing at one of the further piers can take longer to clear than the terminal building's size suggests. It's worth confirming your terminal at booking rather than after you've landed, particularly if someone's meeting you rather than just picking you up outside.

The run down from Slough or Burnham is around 45 miles depending on the exact postcode, and while that's a fixed distance, the time it takes isn't — the M25/M23 interchange around Junction 7 can add twenty minutes on a bad afternoon, which is why we build in a wider time buffer for Gatwick departures than we do for Heathrow.