A holiday goes wrong in one specific way, and it happens before the airport. Four people, three large suitcases, a 07:40 flight, and a sedan with four seats. Everyone fits. The luggage doesn’t.
That is the part of a holiday airport transfer worth planning. The flight is fixed. The rest is arithmetic.
Working backwards from the departure time
For an international flight we count back from take-off: two hours for check-in and security, plus the drive, plus twenty minutes of margin. The drive is the part that moves. The same route from a hotel in the centre is not the same at six in the morning as at eight.
So we don’t ask what time you want the car. We ask for the flight number and the address, and we give you one time. If you want to know how we got to it, we’ll tell you. Most people would rather just have the time.
Luggage is the number that decides the car
Seats are what the registration says. Luggage is what you actually feel. A sedan has four seats; with two people and two cases it is exactly the right car, and with four people and four large cases it isn’t. A seven-seat van takes five passengers with hold luggage without anyone holding a bag on their knees. Seven passengers with luggage is a minibus, not a van.
This is why, when you ask for a Bucharest airport transfer, we ask how many bags and not only how many people. For a family of six with skis or a group travelling together, the answer is usually an airport shuttle service in Bucharest rather than two cars.
The return is the half people forget
Departures get planned. Arrivals get improvised, usually at 01:30, tired, with a phone at four percent.
We track the flight number, so a delay moves the pickup and nobody pays for waiting that helped no one. On average it takes about twenty minutes from landing until someone walks out of arrivals with their bags — sooner without hold luggage, longer if there is a queue at passport control. The driver is inside, on the left-hand side of the arrivals hall, in front of the Five to Go café, with your name on a tablet, and sends a message as well.
Nobody needs to look for a car park at half past one in the morning.
A journey done well is invisible. You feel it only at the end, when someone steps out rested and on time.