The forecourt, the car park, and why it matters to you

The mechanics are broadly the same at every large UK airport. There is a designated drop-off zone immediately outside departures, it is monitored by number plate recognition, there is a charge for entering it, and there is a time limit measured in a small number of minutes. Overstay and the charge escalates sharply. Return within a short window and the system may charge you again.

Airports do not publish these arrangements to be difficult; they publish them because the forecourts physically cannot absorb the traffic otherwise. A terminal handling tens of thousands of passengers a day has a kerb a few hundred metres long, and the only way it works is if every vehicle on it is moving within a couple of minutes. The rules exist because the geometry demands them.

• Camera enforcement rather than a person with a clipboard
• A charge to enter, escalating sharply on overstay
• Time limits measured in minutes, not tens of minutes
• Designed for set-down, which it does well

Parking removes time from the equation entirely. The car sits in a bay, legally, for as long as it needs to, and the chauffeur walks into the terminal and stands where you will come out. There is nothing to call, nothing to time, and no possibility of a circling driver being on the wrong side of a terminal loop when you emerge.

It also changes the physical experience of the last stage. A chauffeur who is inside the building takes your trolley at the doors and walks you to the car. A chauffeur who is outside meets you on a pavement, which is a different and considerably worse arrangement in February. The car park is not a technicality; it is the thing that makes the service work.

Departures. Set-down is exactly what a forecourt is for, and dropping a passenger at the doors takes ninety seconds: bags out of the boot, onto a trolley, and the car is moving again. There is no reason to park for a departure and no advantage in doing so. The drop-off charge is inside your quoted figure and the whole thing is over before the camera has finished reading the plate.

The other case is a small airport with no enforcement and a car park that is fifty yards from the door, where the distinction hardly exists. At some regional airfields the arrangement is simply a car park and a walk, and none of the above applies. It is the large London airports where the rules bite hardest, and they are also where most arrivals happen.

What we will not do is meet you at the kerb of a major terminal on an arrival because it saves a parking charge. That is the version that produces a passenger standing outside Terminal 3 in the rain with three cases, and no saving is worth it.

Ask one question before you book: where will the driver be when I land? An answer that involves a car park and an arrivals hall is the right one. An answer that involves calling a number when you come out is the other kind, and it may be perfectly acceptable for a short-haul arrival with a cabin bag, but it is not the same service and it should not cost the same.

The second question worth asking is what happens if you are an hour late coming out. If the answer is a per-minute charge starting from the scheduled arrival, you have found a business that has priced the risk onto you. The alternative is an allowance running from the actual landing, which is what a written quotation should say.

• Ask where the driver will be at the moment you land
• Ask when the waiting clock starts, and from which time
• Ask whether parking is inside the figure or added later
• A phone call from a lay-by is a different product at the same price