Hatton Cross tube station is on the Heathrow branch of the London Underground Piccadilly line. It is in Travelcard Zones 5 and 6 and stands between the Great South West Road (A30) and the Heathrow Airport Southern Perimeter Road.
The station, itself in Hillingdon, serves a very small residential community in Hatton, which is in Hounslow. The nearby area is either within the airport or mainly comprises its associated commercial warehousing and light industrial premises. "Hatton Cross" refers to the crossroads on the former coaching road leading southwest and is now applied to the overlying major road intersection immediately southeast of the station.
The station opened on 19 July 1975 in the first phase of the extension of the Piccadilly line from Hounslow West to Heathrow Airport and it remained the terminus until Heathrow Central opened on 16 December 1977.
The platforms at Hatton Cross are in a cut and cover tunnel. The platform tiling on the central columns features patterns derived from the British Airways Speedbird logo. The station building, a brutalist, concrete-and-glass, single-storey box, incorporates a busy bus station, which serves the airport and surrounding area.
For the new Terminal 4 at the airport, a single track loop was tunnelled from Hatton Cross to Heathrow Central (now called "Heathrow Terminals 1, 2, 3") with an intermediate new Terminal 4 station, which opened on 12 April 1986. The tube service to the airport then ran clockwise in a unidirectional loop from Hatton Cross to Terminal 4, on to Terminals 1, 2, 3, and back to Hatton Cross.
On 7 January 2005, the loop and Terminal 4 station closed and the tube service reverted to its previous two-way running between Hatton Cross and the Terminal 1, 2, 3 station while tunnels to the new Heathrow Terminal 5 station were under construction; a shuttle bus from Hatton Cross was provided for passengers travelling to and from Terminal 4. Service round the loop restarted on 17 September 2006.
From 27 March 2008, when Terminal 5 station opened, every other train of the twelve per hour arriving at Hatton Cross from London has taken the Terminal 4 loop and terminated at Heathrow Terminals 1, 2, 3. The alternate trains run direct to Heathrow Terminal 5, via Terminals 1, 2, 3.
On its opening in 1975, Hatton Cross was one of 279 active stations on the London Underground, the highest ever total; the number of stations in the network has since decreased to 270.
The British Airways Flight 38 accident occurred just west of Hatton Cross in 2008.
It was named after the crossroads of the Great Southwest Road and Hatton Road; there had not been an old stone cross there.
Apart from being a tube/bus interchange, the station, at a limit of the Heathrow free bus zone, is a busy bus interchange.
London Buses Routes 90, 203, 283, 285, 423, 482, 490, H25, H26 and Express Route X26 serve the station.