Gatwick Fast Track: what £6 buys at security, and when to skip it

Fast Track security is a dedicated lane at the main security search in each terminal, sold by the airport from £6 per person online. It runs 04:00 to 20:00 every day, children under two go through free with a paying adult, and what you buy is position, not privilege: the lane feeds the same scanners under the same rules as every other lane, so the 2-litre liquids allowance, the belt-and-coat routine and the occasional bag search are identical. The only variable it removes is the queue.

Whether that is worth paying for depends almost entirely on when you fly. Gatwick's measured security queues run under five minutes more than 95% of the time, but the averages hide the dawn departure bank, and £6 for a guaranteed short lane at 05:30 in August is a different proposition from £6 at 14:00 in November. The sections below give you the prices, the layout, and the numbers to decide with.

The from-price is £6 per person booked online through the airport's own site, and prices flex by date, so a peak-summer Saturday can cost more than a February Tuesday. Booking online saves £2 against the on-the-day rate, which makes the walk-up price about £8 when passes are still available. Under-2s are free with a paying adult; everyone else pays, including older children, so a family of four is £24 or more, which is worth knowing before treating it as small change.

Passes are sold per person for a chosen date, and the airport sells Fast Track alongside its parking bookings if you want one transaction. Two timing notes matter more than the price. The lanes close at 20:00, so evening departures have nothing to buy and lose nothing by it. And the product sells out at the sharpest peaks, so if the whole point is a school-holiday dawn flight, book it when you book the trip rather than at the kerb.

The Fast Track entrance sits beside the main security search in both buildings: on Level 20 at the North Terminal, the same floor as the check-in zones, and on Level 30 at the South Terminal, one level up from check-in. Follow the Fast Track signs, scan the pass or booking QR code with your boarding pass at the entry gate, and the lane takes you to the front section of the same search area everyone else is heading for.

From that point the experience is standard Gatwick security: trays, the roller bed, millimetre-wave scanner, and CT screening of your bag with liquids and laptops left inside. Staffing and lane allocation are the airport's to juggle, so at quiet times the fast lane and the standard lanes move at much the same speed, and at peak times the difference is the queue snake you walk past. Time your arrival off your airline's check-in and bag drop windows rather than the security queue alone; the pass shortens one stage, not the morning.

Plenty of passengers have Fast Track before they reach for a card. easyJet includes fast track security in its FLEXI fares and for easyJet Plus annual members, and business-class passengers with British Airways (Club Europe) and Emirates go through the premium security lanes as part of the ticket. On the lounge side, every Clubrooms booking bundles Fast Track at both terminals, which is why Clubrooms at £44 can undercut a cheaper lounge plus a separately bought pass; the lounge guide runs that comparison across all nine pay-per-use rooms.

These inclusions are fare rules rather than airport rules, and they move with the seasons, so treat the list as a prompt to check your own booking rather than a promise. The check takes a minute and the failure mode is only ever paying £6 for something you already owned. If you are travelling with assistance needs, note that the dedicated assistance lane beside the welcome desk is free and needs no pass at all; the special assistance guide covers it.

Gatwick's security queues are measured under a CAA-endorsed standard and published monthly, and the numbers are the context every "is fast track gatwick worth it" answer needs: over the year to August 2025, queues ran five minutes or shorter more than 95% of the time at both terminals, and 15 minutes or shorter over 99.7% of the time. Most passengers, most of the day, would pay £6 to walk past a queue of a few minutes. If your flight leaves mid-morning to mid-afternoon outside the school holidays, skip it with a clear conscience.

The case for buying is concentrated where the averages are thinnest: the 05:00 to 08:00 short-haul bank, school-holiday and bank-holiday mornings, the first wave after a disruption day, and any morning where a tight connection or a late train has already spent your slack. In those windows £6 buys certainty, which is a fair price for not rehearsing the sprint to the gate. Families can get some of the same effect free from the family lane, and the security guide's live-app tip lets you check the actual queue on the day before deciding at the kerb, since on-the-day passes remain on sale when capacity allows.

The airport sells a second product under the Fast Track name for the other end of the journey: Fast Track passport control, a dedicated lane to the UK border for arriving passengers. It costs from £15 per person, runs 06:00 to midnight daily at both terminals, and under-2s accompany a paying adult free. It is pre-book only, at least four hours before use, with no way to pay at the airport, and the lane is capped at 50 passengers an hour, which is what keeps it moving.

Who actually gains? Passengers who cannot use the eGates: families with children under 10, holders of passports outside the eGate scheme, and anyone facing the staffed-desk queue after a long-haul landing. If everyone in your party carries an eGate-eligible biometric passport, the free gates are usually quick enough that £15 a head is a hard sell. The passport control guide covers eGate eligibility and the arrival flow, and the rest of the airport's paid and free help is indexed in the services guide.