Chauffeur to Sydney Airport – From Heathrow to Fulham

• I am a Qantas First Class Virgin
• Booking Qantas and Singapore Airlines First class between Sydney and London
• Chauffeur to Sydney Airport – From Heathrow to Fulham
• Qantas First Class Check In
• Finally, I make it to the Qantas First Class Lounge, Sydney

One of the perks of travelling Qantas First Class is that you get a complimentary chauffeur driven ride to the airport, and from the airport to your destination. I have written about how I like a booked hotel transfer before. But this is from my home. Squeal!

Now, this is not offered without limits – ithere are are a range of terms and conditions, including restrictions on distances for pickup and drop off.

Here are the flights and destinations covered:

Outsourced

The actual service is outsourced, and that is where the process slightly falls down.

The online process is fairly smooth, although it is not always clear what to do next, and how the whole process is going to work, and when you need to book, and how it will be confirmed. Call me a nervous flyer, but I worry about these things…

You have to book the two transfers separately and get separate confirmations. The confirmations are covered in warnings about what will happen if your flight changes and admonishments to ‘Read the Terms and Conditions of your booking.’

Bag count

The other difficulty is the bag count. You need to enter the number of bags you are carrying with you – but there is no facility to distinguish size and scale. So in our case, the two of us had 2 bags each plus cabin luggage. So we said six, and of course that meant we get sent a people mover. A very comfortable people mover, but a people mover none the less.

The day before – a Sunday, the outsourced service rang to confirm, but it wasn’t immediately obvious that it was the company and not Qantas that was calling. So of course, I asked about the arrangements for our arrival in London. The direct but helpful caller – then had to say, ‘we don’t deal with that – you’ll have to contact Qantas about that’. It sort of destroys the illusion of seamless service really.

On the bags issue – it was even worse in London. Because of our bag count – and maybe their usual clientele they had reserved 2 cars for us. This seemed a bit extreme. Our cockney sounding driver(s) were not phased. The took all our bags with them to the two Mercedes S class limousines in the car part. Sized up their ability to fin in the respective boots, and asked us if we would be OK with just one car. Despite the appeal of having our luggage travel by separate car – I resisted.

Last Word

Ooohh! I could get used to this. Despite my nervousness, the actual experience was pretty seamless, and a wonderful to begin and complete the first leg of our journey