Bristol Airport said it is going to increase the frequency of bus connections into the city centre, after travel and holidays guru Simon Calder named the airport as ‘surely the worst-connected major airport’ in Britain.
The airport said it would lay on more buses during the day and, crucially, late in the evening, after the issues thousands of passengers face who arrive on late night flights were experienced by the travel journalist and TV holiday expert when he arrived after midnight and tried to get into Bristol.
Simon Calder said arriving after midnight at Bristol Airport was ‘about as inconvenient as it is possible to be’, if you are relying on public transport.
Bristol Airport cuts the frequency of the various airport bus services, including the A1 service from the airport into the city centre and Temple Meads, to just once an hour – so passengers on several flights that land around midnight and make it through customs and baggage reclaim after 12.20am have to wait an hour for the next service.
Mr Calder said he joined a queue for a taxi at the on-site office – which costs around £50 to travel into the city centre – but there were long waits, so he ordered an Uber and had to walk off site in the middle of the night to be picked up.
Mr Calder said his flight arrived from Marseille – which he described as the worst connected airport in Europe – on time at 12.20am into Bristol. Writing in the Independent, he said: “I touched down at surely the worst-connected major British airport: Bristol. It turns out that this moment is about as inconvenient as it is possible to be for anyone depending on public transport,” he wrote in the Independent.
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“Even if you were to sprint from plane to passport control and get through in seconds, you would still be scuppered. The airport bus for central Bristol leaves at 12.20am, and the departure to south Bristol and Bath is at 12.25am.
“With the next services at least an hour away, many people try for a taxi, for which there is an on-site office. The queue stretched out of the door. Customers were warned of 20-minute waits.
“Thank goodness for Uber, which could supply a driver for us (by now I had teamed up with Stan and Tom) in 11 minutes. Just as well it wasn’t any quicker: to reach the pick-up point involved skirting around a building site and walking the length of a car park,” he added.
Bristol Airport’s late night connections issues
Bristol Airport is located in the North Somerset countryside on the main A38 between Bristol and Bridgwater around eight miles away from the city centre. The airport has no railway connection near it, and an Airport Flyer bus service, which is operated by First Bus with frequency, routes and timetables organised by the airport itself.
The main A1 Airport Flyer service into Temple Meads and the city centre leaves the airport every 10-15 minutes during the day, but this service drops to every half an hour after 7pm, and every hour after the 12.25am departure.
On a standard Friday evening in September, 25 flights arrive at Bristol Airport between 10pm and midnight, and another seven arrive between midnight and 1am, which means around 5,000 passengers will land at an airport with only five buses to take them to the city.
Taxis can be booked in advance, and a taxi office is open 24 hours a day to assign taxis on demand, but the price of an eight-mile trip into the city centre around or after midnight can be £50. As Mr Calder discovered, Uber drivers will come out to Bristol Airport, but passengers will often have to walk off the airport site onto the main A38 as the drivers want to avoid paying the pick-up charge for entering the airport site.
What Bristol Airport said
A spokesperson for Bristol Airport said the airport was looking into increasing its bus services as part of his major expansion plans.
“We are looking into our schedule and frequency for both the A1 and A3 Flyer for next year, as we want to make it easy for people to travel to and from Bristol Airport in a sustainable way,” she said.
“The intention is to increase the frequency of the A1 flyer throughout the daytime with more buses being scheduled later throughout the night and early hours.
“Additionally, work is well under way on our £60 million new Public Transport Interchange for coaches, buses and other forms of transport, which will involve more than doubling the number of coach/bus bays as part of this expansion,” she added.