The sector is held by BA Euroflyer, British Airways, easyJet, Jet2, Ryanair and TUI Airways.
Airport pair · hand carry reference
LGW London to ALC Alicante
Gatwick Airport, the United Kingdom, to Alicante-Elche Airport, Spain. Computed from the scheduled network held on 2026-09-07.
- Nonstop
- 12.3 times a day
- Great circle
- 1,431 km
- Block, estimated
- 2h 20m
- Door to door
- 9h 05m
What LGW to ALC looks like
The LGW to ALC sector, the carriers on it and the flying time, before anything is promised to anybody.
London LGW to Alicante ALC is a medium haul sector of 1,431 km by great circle, flown nonstop 12.3 times a day.
At the cruise speed this site models for 1,431 km, 830 km an hour, and thirty minutes of taxi at the two ends, the flight blocks at about 2h 20m.
London LGW is a major hub in the network held here, 203 scheduled destinations and 510.1 departures a day. Alicante ALC has 145 destinations and 231.5 departures a day.
Alicante is one hour ahead of London all year.
The pair sits inside Europe, a corridor where the site already publishes 14 written lanes that go into customs and ground detail this page does not.
Who flies the sector, and how often
Average daily frequencies on LGW to ALC from the scheduled route statistics, both directions, with the operating carriers named.
| Direction | Flights a day | Flights a week | Operated by |
|---|---|---|---|
| LGW to ALC | 12.29 | 86 | BA Euroflyer, British Airways, easyJet, Jet2, Ryanair, TUI Airways |
| ALC to LGW | 3.71 | 26 | British Airways, TUI Airways, Vueling |
7 carriers are recorded on the sector, so a missed departure is normally a rebooking rather than a lost day.
The two directions are not level: LGW to ALC runs 12.3 times a day, the return runs 3.7 times a day, and a round trip has to be planned around the thinner of the two.
At 12.3 times a day there is usually another departure within a few hours, which is what makes a same day booking on this pair realistic.
Between them the two directions put about 112 departures a week on LGW to ALC, which is the number that decides whether a seat can be found today or on Thursday.
The clock from collection to signature
The same ground timings the route calculator starts from, applied to the 2h 20m block time on LGW to ALC. Change any of them in the tool further down and the total moves with them.
| Stage | Allowed | Elapsed |
|---|---|---|
| Collection and the run to LGW | 90 min | 1h 30m |
| At LGW before departure | 180 min | 4h 30m |
| LGW to ALC in the air, estimated | 140 min | 6h 50m |
| Formalities at ALC | 90 min | 8h 20m |
| Delivery run in Alicante | 45 min | 9h 05m |
| Door to door | 545 min | 9h 05m |
On the desk standard ground timings, ninety minutes to collect and reach the airport, three hours at the airport before departure, ninety minutes of arrival formalities and a forty five minute delivery run, the door to door figure for LGW to ALC is 9h 05m.
A courier who leaves London at 09:00 local is on the ground in Alicante at about 12:20 local and at the door by 14:35 the same day.
Working backwards from a six in the evening handover in Alicante, the last useful departure from London is around 12:25 local.
When the nonstop does not work
Every airport that joins the two ends, ranked by when they land, among the ones whose weaker leg is dependable enough to plan on. Connection time is allowed for the size of the hub. 63 of them join LGW to ALC.
| Connecting at | LGW to hub, flights a day | Hub to ALC, flights a day | Track, km | Estimated, gate to gate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nantes NTE | 2 | 0.71 | 1,446 | 3h 56m |
| Toulouse TLS | 0.57 | 0.86 | 1,460 | 3h 59m |
| Ibiza IBZ | 8.29 | 4.29 | 1,550 | 4h 01m |
| Bilbao BIO | 4 | 2.57 | 1,488 | 4h 01m |
| Palma PMI | 14.86 | 4.43 | 1,627 | 4h 23m |
| Barcelona BCN | 15.19 | 4.57 | 1,513 | 4h 31m |
With 12.3 times a day on the nonstop, a connection here is a disruption plan rather than a routing, and it is listed because a closed runway or a cancellation wave is exactly when nobody has time to work it out.
63 airports connect the two ends on the scheduled network held here. The quickest of the dependable ones is Nantes NTE, where the weaker of the two legs still runs 5 times a week.
Through NTE the routing covers 1,446 km against the 1,431 km nonstop track and takes about 3h 56m in the air and on the ground at the hub, allowing 60 minutes to connect at an airport of that size.
That is only 1h 36m more than the nonstop, which is close enough that a connection is worth taking when the nonstop is full or badly timed.
Behind it, Toulouse TLS at 3h 59m and Ibiza IBZ at 4h 01m hold the same connection, so a booking has three hubs to try before it has to wait for the nonstop.
If nothing suitable leaves London, London LHR is 41 km away by great circle and carries 212 scheduled destinations of its own, which is usually a shorter road transfer than a lost day.
If nothing suitable leaves Alicante, Valencia VLC is 134 km away by great circle and carries 101 scheduled destinations of its own, which is usually a shorter road transfer than a lost day.
Restricted hours at either end
Widely documented operating restrictions, checked 2026-09-07. Exemptions and seasonal variations exist, so confirm with the carrier before relying on any of them.
London LGW is shut to scheduled movements between 23:30 and 06:00 local, so a collection in London that runs late does not simply catch a later flight, it waits for the morning and loses a working day in Alicante.
London LGW, night restrictions: Night movements are capped between 23:30 and 06:00 local under a seasonal quota.
Plan London to Alicante yourself
The same tool the dispatchers use, open to anybody and free. It is loaded with this pair already. Change either end, add a stopover or a preferred airline, and it works out the connection, the transit and the door to door clock, with the real departures underneath. Put it on your own site if it is useful to you.
min
min
min
min
Restrictions
Where this came from, and where to look next
- Carriers and frequencies: AeroDataBox scheduled route statistics, retrieved 2026-09-07. Average daily flights, not a timetable.
- Distances: great circle from published coordinates. They read short against a flown track, which is why the block time above applies a factor to them.
- Block and connection times: the same model the route calculator lower down this page runs, at the same rounding.
- Restrictions: the airport notes file, checked 2026-09-07.
- Industrial sites: public company information. Nothing here says or implies that any company named is a customer of any courier operator.
Who publishes this. OnBoard Courier is a placement desk in Dubai. An assignment is carried out by a vetted partner operator, with the desk as the single point of contact from the quote to the signature. This page exists because our own dispatchers need the answer for LGW to ALC in the twenty minutes before a promise is made, and a reference only one operator can read is not a reference. Free to read, quote and cite. Found an error? Tell us and we will correct it.
If you need something moved rather than looked up, the desk prices a hand carry in fifteen minutes.
- The LGW airport entry
- The ALC airport entry
- Hand carry into the United Kingdom
- Hand carry into Spain
- The route calculator
More pairs through LGW and ALC: Derby and Nottingham to Alicante, Eindhoven to Alicante, Alicante to Stockholm, Alicante to Oslo, Hamburg to Alicante, Toulouse to Alicante, Bratislava to Alicante, Paris to Alicante.