A controller, a phone and a flight tracker in another tab
Early morning in a taxi office with airport work looks the same most days. There are a dozen or more arrivals booked, each with a pickup time the customer entered when they booked, often weeks ago. The controller has a flight tracking website open in one tab and the dispatch screen in another, and works down the list, typing flight numbers and comparing times.
It only half works. A flight from Alicante is running late, but nobody checks it again after the first look, so a driver sits in the short stay car park paying for parking while the passengers are still over France. A flight from Dublin lands early with a tailwind and the customer rings the office from arrivals, annoyed, because no one is there. A customer booked with the wrong flight number, and nobody noticed until the driver was already at the terminal.
On a busy Saturday in summer, the checking simply stops. The office is taking calls and handling the local work, and the airport list is left to look after itself.
The booking is right on the day it is made and wrong on the day it happens
The root cause is that an airport booking is stored like any other job: a pickup address, a time and a customer. The time is the customer's guess, based on the scheduled arrival plus whatever allowance they thought reasonable for baggage and passport control. The flight itself changes, sometimes several times, and nothing in the booking follows it.
- The flight number is often in a notes field, not a proper field the system can use.
- Pickup times are set once and only changed if someone remembers to look.
- There is no rule for how long after landing the driver should be there, so each controller does it differently.
- Diverted and cancelled flights are discovered when the driver is already waiting.
- The customer's mobile number is not always on the booking, so the driver cannot reach them.
What the missed and wasted runs add up to
Each problem is small on its own. Together they cost you in several places at once.
| What happens | Who feels it | The knock-on |
|---|---|---|
| Driver waits for a late flight | Driver and office | A car tied up that could have done local work, plus parking charges |
| Flight lands early, nobody there | Customer | A complaint, a review, a customer who books someone else next time |
| Wrong flight number | Driver | A wasted trip, or a long wait while the office tries to reach the customer |
| Cancelled or diverted flight | Office | Late night phone calls and a driver who has already left |
| Manual checking | Controller | Time taken away from the phones at the busiest hours |
Account customers notice this most. A company that books airport transfers for visiting staff expects the car to be there when their guest walks out, and they remember the one time it was not.
Flight tracking that updates the booking, not just the screen
What we build sits between your booking channels, a flight data service and your dispatch system. It does the checking a controller would do, on every airport job, all the time.
- The flight number is captured as its own field on every airport booking, from your website form, your booking app or the call handler's screen, and checked at the point of booking against the airline's schedule for that date.
- If the number does not match a flight arriving at that airport on that day, the booking is flagged there and then, while the customer is still on the phone or the page.
- From the day before, the flight is followed through a flight data service such as FlightAware's AeroAPI, which reports estimated and actual landing times.
- Your office sets the rule for pickup time: for example, a set allowance after landing for domestic flights and a longer one for international arrivals, or a different allowance for passengers with hold luggage.
- When the estimated landing time moves, the pickup time in your dispatch system is moved to match through its integration or API, and the driver's job details update.
- Cancellations, diversions and large changes go to an exceptions list for a controller to decide, with the customer's contact details ready.
- The customer can get an optional text when their driver is allocated and when the pickup time has been adjusted for their flight.
Where your dispatch system has no way in for outside changes, the tool gives controllers a single list of airport jobs with the changes highlighted, so the check is one screen instead of a dozen searches.
What a Saturday looks like afterwards
The airport list keeps itself up to date. The controller sees the arrivals for the day with their current landing times, and only the problem flights ask for attention: the one cancelled at the last minute, the one diverted to another airport, the booking with a flight number that never matched.
Drivers arrive near the time the passengers come out, not two hours early and not after the customer has started ringing. Parking charges fall back to the ordinary cost of the job. When an account customer asks why their guest waited, you can show the flight times and when the pickup was moved.
The same flight data helps with outbound work too. If a customer's departure is cancelled after you have booked their pickup from home, the office can see it and call them before the driver sets off.
Is this happening in your office?
- Controllers check flights by hand on a separate website.
- Drivers regularly wait at the airport for flights that are late.
- Customers ring from arrivals asking where their car is.
- Flight numbers are typed into a notes field, sometimes wrongly.
- Nobody checks airport jobs once the office gets busy.