120 C/D class flights over the last 12 months.
Number via Heathrow? One in, one out. I had no option as I was at a meeting until late afternoon and couldn't get to my usual airport in time.
Everything written on this thread is true. One more thing is the dreadfully expensive and very cramped long term car park. Having queued to get off the M4, then down the spur road and spotted the sign, you drive for miles to a small entrance somewhere down near where people probably used to board Lancastrians. The parking spaces are very narrow and you're lucky not to get a dented door...they were probably designed for the cars driven by the people who used to board Lancastrians.
Then find the bus stop and work out which bus is which. But all are driven by a smiling and enthusiastic 'turbo-turban' who manages to corner the unwieldy brute with Formula 1 standards of skill (and G force), before treating you to a tour of various dingy concrete caverns under the bowels of T1.
The joy is even greater on the return trip - having made it through the horrors of immigration and customs, you then stand around in the rain (if it's Terminal 2) waiting for the bus, then off for another tour of traffic jams and odd corners of the airport - before the ludicrous junction at the Concorde-not-really-a-roundabout and down to the car park to part with a king's ransom in fees.
Even then it's not over - there's the game called Finding The M4! I've never quite found out how to get from Heathrow to the M40 except via Maidenhead - is it really so bloody difficult to provide clear signposting which leads you up the spur and onto the M4/M25/M40, instead of 20 sets of traffic lights past the ba waterworks and finally onto the M4 at the Honda roundabout halfway to Slough? I suspect Livingstone's hand in that somewhere.....
Heathrow really sucks! Whereas today I had a pleasant drive (exactly the same distance as it would have been to Heathrow) though the Heart of England to the spacious car park at Birmingham airport, then a 3 minute trip to the Terminal!
Another 'joy' of Heathrow is the 'Heathrow Express'. After dumping my luggage in T2 and paying someone 6 quid to look at it for 5 hours, I then walked along miles of empty echoing tunnels to the train. Cheapest fare from Heathrow to Chancery Lane? 34 quid return!!!
Only travel through Heathrow if there's really no other alternative!