Can you help my son and his friend plan a charity ‘jailbreak’ from Heathrow?

Q I’m hoping you can help my student son and his friend. They are currently at Heathrow Airport doing a jailbreak challenge from university. They have been at the airport all afternoon and are having no luck at all getting a free flight. We were wondering if you may be kind enough to offer some advice or help?

Name supplied

A Sorry to hear about their frustrating experience. I will try to offer some advice, though they may not like it.

“Jailbreak” charity challenges involve getting sponsorship for travelling as far as possible from university in a set length of time, often 36 hours. Since the concept began, stories about generous airlines offering flights to Europe, the US and even Australia have become part of student lore. But I am afraid that several trends are working against the possibility that a friendly airline manager at Heathrow will hand over a couple of tickets.

First, while the flights might be free to the recipient, the airline will have to pay a range of per-passenger taxes and fees – so that manager will need to justify the expense to head office. Next, planes are flying fuller than ever, so the number of spare seats is shrinking. Third, the travel industry is acquiring charity fatigue, and after thousands of approaches the standard response is usually politely negative.

On trains, too, I have also heard that attitudes among onboard rail staff to jailbreak participants are also hardening. Some guards no longer turn a blind eye to people who cheerfully explain “It’s for charity” when asked for tickets, and treat them as fare dodgers.

Fortunately, hitchhiking continues to deliver free transportation. From Heathrow Airport they should take any local bus (they’re all free) beneath the runway to the M4 access road north of the central area. To reach the furthest parts of the kingdom they will need a sign reading “M40” or “M1”. Once they are under way northwestwards, they can aim to travel to Birmingham, Preston, Glasgow and beyond.

Every day our travel correspondent Simon Calder tackles a reader’s question. Just email yours to s@hols.tv or tweet @simoncalder