Being collected at Heathrow, terminal by terminal

T2 is the Star Alliance terminal, so United, Lufthansa, Air Canada, Singapore Airlines and their partners land there, along with a rotating cast of others. Arrivals emerge into a hall that is smaller and busier than T5, and the meeting area is compact enough that a board is easy to spot even at a busy hour.

What catches people out is the satellite. T2B handles a good deal of the long-haul traffic and is connected to the main building by a long underground walkway. Ten minutes of corridor after a twelve-hour flight is a real thing, and it is the single most common reason a passenger at T2 arrives at the doors later than the tracking suggested they would.

T4 sits on the south side of the airport and is reached from the Southern Perimeter Road rather than the central tunnel. It hosts a good deal of the SkyTeam traffic along with several Gulf and Asian carriers, and it is physically separated from everything else at Heathrow. If you land at T4 and your car is at T3, the fix is a Heathrow Express or Elizabeth line ride between terminals, which is free for inter-terminal journeys but still costs you twenty minutes and a lift.

The practical consequence is that we confirm the terminal against the airline rather than the airport map. Terminals do move: carriers have been reallocated between T3, T4 and T2 more than once in recent years, and a booking taken in January against a terminal that changed in March is a booking waiting to go wrong. The flight number is checked on the morning, every time.

• T5 for British Airways long-haul and most of its short-haul
• T2 for Star Alliance carriers, with a long walk from the satellite
• T3 for Virgin, Emirates, Delta, American and a broad mix
• T4 on the south side, physically separate from the rest

If you are connecting rather than arriving, do not book a car at all. Passengers with an onward flight from a different Heathrow terminal are better served by the free inter-terminal transfers than by a chauffeur, and any operator who takes that booking without asking is taking your money for a journey the airport does for nothing.

The second case is a short-haul arrival with hand luggage into T5 during the middle of the day. You will be at the kerb in twelve minutes, and a kerbside pick-up on the short-stay level costs less than a meet inside. We will still meet you if you would rather be met, but the honest position is that it buys you very little on that particular arrival.

The third is a group of more than eight arriving together. At Heathrow the sensible answer is a named meeting point and a Sprinter rather than one chauffeur trying to keep a group of twelve together across a hall. That is a different vehicle and a different price, and it is better decided in advance.

From T2 and T3, the exit is back through the tunnel to the M4 spur, then either east on the M4 or south to the A30 depending on where you are going. Central London on a weekday morning is the A4 through Chiswick, and it is slow from about seven. From T5 the natural exit is the M25 at junction 14, which is the right road for anywhere north or west but a poor start to a journey into Kensington.

T4 has the most awkward exit of the four, because the Southern Perimeter Road funnels traffic onto the A30 and adds a stretch of urban road before you reach anything fast. On a Friday afternoon that alone is worth ten minutes. None of this changes your price, which is fixed in writing, but it is why the chauffeur may leave by a route that looks longer on a map.

The reliable source is your airline app on the morning of travel, not the booking confirmation from four months ago. Terminal allocations at Heathrow shift with the season and with airline moves, and the airport publishes changes closer to the day than most passengers check. If your app and your ticket disagree, the app wins.

For our part, the terminal on the worksheet is confirmed against the live arrival on the day, and the chauffeur is told before he leaves base. If it has moved, it has moved before he sets off rather than after he has parked. That is the whole reason the flight number matters more than anything else you tell us.

• Check the airline app on the morning, not the original confirmation
• Send both numbers if your ticket shows a codeshare
• Tell us if you are connecting rather than arriving
• T5 collections are the least affected by central-area traffic