Just a note to anyone that is considering this trip and has small children.. don't. The flight itself is pleasant itself, but when you arrive you're deposited at the farthermost gate (practically in another county) and have to trek about a mile balancing bags, screaming baby etc.. Then once you've retrieved your luggage and pushchair from the carousel, you then need to schlep across terminals via monorail to collect your hire car (because the North Terminal rental desks close after 10pm).

Once at the North terminal you walk through building works, poorly sign posted corridors and three floors of ramps to reach the car hire centre.

It actually took us longer to leave the airport than the flight itself

Last time I did this flight it took 15 minutes to taxi (no exaggeration), then 10 minutes waiting in the plane for the tunnel to the terminal to be connected. We then disembarked to find the terminal doors locked, another 10 minutes wait.

And then the massive trek Castro mentioned. It was overall about an hour getting through, and that was with hand luggage and electronic passport - I would not be surprised if some people got to the pick-up two hours after landing.

There's a lot more to arriving on time than when the wheels touch tarmac.

We did the same flight in July with our 2 sons. Exactly the same problems as Castro ( apart from screaming baby! ). When we eventually got to the car hire place, we were in a fairly small queue but it still took an hour to get our car. We left Gatwick at 1am in the morning and then had to drive 3.5 hours to Wales.
From now on we will use Swiss or BA!!

Thanks for reminding me why I've used Swiss the last 4 or 5 years.

For Wales, LX to Birmingham is well worth a look! Fares have been pretty decent of late.

Yep this is my only complaint about Gatwick. The plane from Zurich lands about 2 miles from the gate. Then you have to walk another mile to collect bags and get through customs and immigration - and those queues can be pretty big - even at 10 or 11pm at night.

Having said that, I book my Zurich -> Gatwick flights several months in advance for about 40CHF, so i'm willing to put up with a bit of hassle at the other end (plus the singing chavs on the District Line).

Hi Baboon,

I wanted to say thanks for your posting. I haven't done 10 posts so can't do it automatically!!
I hadn't thought of flying to Birmingham to get to Wales. I will do some investigating. :-)