| Paul McDuffy Whenever you fly and you want to have travel prepared for you when you arrive, you should call a taxi company and arrange for a car to be waiting for you for when you get to your destination. Taxi services are happy to take reservations for airport pickups; however, they can't wait around for too long a period of time if you are not there to claim your cab within a reasonable waiting period.
Taxi drivers are only making money if they have someone in the car, so they certainly don't want to have to stand around waiting for people longer than they have to. Usually, they will allow for a certain amount of leeway, such as ten minutes, or a bit more, because they do realize that there are a number of things which can slow people down when they are traveling into an airport.
Since you will quickly realize that a cab won't wait an unusual amount of time for you after your appointed pickup time, you should take steps to make sure that they are going to still be there when you finally get to the front of the terminal. The best way to do this is to book your cab to pick you up after the time your flight lands, not your scheduled arrival time, as no one is ever ready to go right at the time the flight is scheduled to land.
Remember to allow more time when guessing a good time to book a cab based on the conditions of your flight. If you're checking bags, be sure to allow more time. Also, if you're flying internationally and are going to have to clear customs, you also want to make sure to allow for more time for that.
The other thing that you can do is to get the phone number of either your driver's cab or the dispatch office and have it handy when you land. That way, if something happens that is going to delay you, you can be sure to get in touch with them right away and ask them to hold the car for you, or to send another one later if it looks like it's going to be a long period of time. If the driver does wait extra long for you, be sure that you tip them more than normal, as their income for the day will have been hurt by the time they spent waiting for you.
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Paul McDuffy is a consultant for Chicago taxi service and Lyons taxi services as well as national courier service businesses. |
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