The short-stay car park is the real arrivals hall

Airport car parks are unusual buildings in that almost everybody moving through them is carrying something heavy. That single fact turns every stair into an obstacle and every lift into a queue, and it happens at exactly the moments when the car park is fullest. Between seven and nine in the morning at a large terminal the lifts run continuously and still cannot keep pace, and the people waiting for them are the ones who chose the level furthest from the concourse.

Distances inside airport car parks are short. Vertical movement is what costs time. A single lift serving four levels at eight in the morning, with everyone carrying luggage, is slower than a two-minute walk on the flat.

Where there is a choice of stair or lift, a chauffeur going in alone takes the stair and saves the lift for the walk back with the bags. It is an obvious economy and it is regularly missed.

Loading a car is a sequence rather than a set of tasks, and the sequence exists for the passenger rather than the luggage. Watch a poor version of it and you will see somebody standing beside an open door in the cold while cases go in behind them, or sitting inside with the boot open and a draught running through the cabin. Neither is a disaster and both are entirely avoidable by doing the same four things in the same order every time.

The order matters. Loading the boot first and opening the rear door second means the passenger is not standing beside the car while cases are lifted. It also means the door is closed against the weather for as short a time as possible, which at a British airport in February is not a trivial consideration.

A chauffeur who opens the passenger door first and then walks round to the boot has just left someone sitting in a car with the boot open and cold air coming through. Small thing. Noticeable thing.

• Luggage in first, passenger second.
• Rear door opened from the pavement side wherever the bay allows.
• A final look at the trolley bay before pulling away.