Accessible chauffeur travel

Most of the difficulty in an assisted transfer is geometry, and most of that is fixed before the passenger arrives. The seat goes back on its runners, the head restraint comes up or out, and the door is opened to its full stop rather than the polite half most drivers use. That alone changes the height and the angle of the move.

What kind of help you want is agreed at the booking, and the chauffeur will confirm it again before touching anything. Some passengers want a hand to steady against the door frame and nothing else. Others want a firm arm and a count of three. A few want the chauffeur to stand back entirely and simply hold the chair still.

Nobody is lifted. Our chauffeurs are not trained in manual handling of a person and will not attempt a lift, because getting that wrong injures the passenger as often as it injures the driver. Where a hoist or a two-person transfer is required, that is a service with different equipment and we will say so.

A companion travelling with you does not change the quotation, because the price is for the car rather than per seat. What it does change is where everyone sits, and that is worth deciding in advance rather than in the road.

Where a carer needs to sit beside the passenger, the front passenger seat comes forward and the pair travel together in the back. Where the passenger transfers more easily into the front, the carer takes the rear and the chauffeur adjusts the mirror accordingly. Small things, agreed in a sentence at booking.

On longer journeys, tell us if the passenger needs to stop more often than most. It changes the route rather than the price, and a chauffeur who knows to plan for a break every ninety minutes will choose services with a genuinely accessible layout rather than the next one on the motorway.

Hospital work is unpredictable in one direction only: appointments finish late far more often than early. For that reason we build hospital bookings as hourly hire rather than as two transfers, so the car is already there when you are ready and nobody is waiting in a corridor for a return call to be answered.

Discharge days are the sharpest version of this. A discharge time given at ten in the morning has a way of becoming half past three, and by then a pre-booked car has usually been and gone. The car waits, or holds nearby and returns within minutes.

Where medication, equipment or a package of supplies comes home with the patient, mention it. It affects which car we send far more than the number of passengers does.

Airport assistance and a chauffeur solve two halves of the same problem, and they meet at a specific point. Special assistance takes you from the aircraft to the arrivals hall; the chauffeur takes you from there to the car. Agreeing exactly where that handover happens is what stops a passenger sitting in a wheelchair by a lift for half an hour.

At Heathrow the meeting point is usually the assistance desk in the arrivals hall of the relevant terminal rather than the general meeting area, and the chauffeur will wait there rather than at the barrier. Departures work the other way: the car stops at the drop-off, and the chauffeur takes you and the bags to the assistance desk inside before leaving.

Book the airline assistance separately and early. It is a free service, it has to be requested at least 48 hours ahead to be reliable, and no chauffeur company can arrange it on your behalf.