Airport Cars & London Airport Transfer

London Heathrow Airport Guide

Heathrow is London’s main airport and, in fact, the world’s busiest international airport. It is 15 miles west of the city and has just added a brand new, cutting edge fifth terminal.

Between around 5 am and 11 pm, Heathrow can be reached by rail. There’s an Express train to Paddington taking 15 minutes and costing £32 return. The stopping train takes about half an hour and costs about £7 for a single ticket. The tube runs during the same sort of times and takes about an hour to central London. Coaches also operate during the day, taking from 40-80 minutes, but the first arrival time from London is 8 am. Those catching early morning flights might prefer to stay in a hotel near Heathrow Airport the night before.

A taxi into London from here will cost £45-70 and take about an hour. Those arriving with their own car at Heathrow can park in one of the Long Stay car parks for around £15 per day. They are between 5 and 15 minutes from the terminals via a courtesy shuttle bus.

Heathrow Parking Guide

If you’re arriving at Heathrow by car, you don’t have to be limited to the on-site car parks. There are a number of off-site parking options that could be more convenient for you. Prices vary from place to place depending on how long you leave the car, the time of year and your requirements, so contact the car parks directly for a quote.

With a meet & greet service, your car is collected at the airport, parked off-site and brought back to you on your return. Usually, all you have to do is call the company when you land and a driver will arrive with your car. With a park & ride service, you drive your own vehicle to the car park and then take a shuttle bus to and from the airport terminal.

We know that the security of the car park will be of the utmost importance to you and you’ll want to know what insurance there is for those looking after your vehicle. To help you out, we’ve put together a handy guide to Heathrow Airport’s off-site car parks, with details of their services.

Value Individual Parking

This company offers both park & ride and meet & greet services at Heathrow Airport. It’s been in business since 2004. Their facility is in Iver, 5 miles from Terminals 1, 2 & 3 and 7 miles from Terminals 4 & 5. This is off the M25, to the North of Heathrow, so it would suit customers approaching from that direction. The compound is private, padlocked and surrounded by steel palisade fencing. After leaving your car there, your party will be given a private transfer to the airport, which normally takes about 15 minutes. The service is available for parties of up to 4 people with a maximum of 6 suitcases.

When you choose meet & greet, a secret password ensures that you are handing the keys over to the right person at the airport. Customers should note that their vehicles and contents are not covered for theft by Value Individual Parking. They are insured only to drive the vehicle to and from the compound, up to a maximum of £50,000.

Q Park Heathrow

This is an international car parking company. Their facility is based on Bath Road, which runs along the north of the Heathrow Airport complex. It’s open 24/7 and has a maximum vehicle height of 1m 80. It’s a park & ride service, with a free shuttle bus to and from all the airport terminals every 20 minutes, 24 hours a day, which takes about 5 or 10 minutes. The compound has a Park Mark Safer Parking Award from the Association of Chief Police Officers.

Reeds Service Park

This car park is in Wraysbury, to the West of Heathrow and accessed from the M25 or the M4. It’s best located for terminals 4 and 5 and is a park & ride facility. A complimentary minibus will take you to and from any of the terminals; to T4 takes 15 minutes and to T5 takes 12 minutes. Valet services are available, if you’d like to return from your holiday to find your car has had a wash and spruce up. The facility has CCTV and brick perimeter walls with barbed wire, but ultimately cars are parked at the owner’s risk and Reeds can’t be held responsible for any loss or damage.

Purple Parking

This is a national car park company with several parking options for Heathrow Airport. The facility is located in Southall, to the North East of the airport, and is accessed off the M4. It’s 15-20 minutes from the airport and courtesy shuttles operate between 03.30 & midnight for park & ride customers. The height restriction is 7ft 6. It has 24 hour security guards, CCTV and a police gold security award. A meet & greet service is also available for this car park. Another alternative is the P&R premium service, where means you drop your own car off at the car park on departure and it is brought back to the airport terminal for you on your return.

Parking Express

This company has managed long stay parking at Heathrow on behalf of BAA since 1999, and its facility is within the boundary of the airport. It is a park & ride service. There are bus stops throughout the car park and courtesy buses every 10 or 12 minutes to take you to the terminals. The journey takes about 10 minutes. The car park has security fencing and patrols as well as CCTV. The gates are controlled automatically and there is a Number Plate Recognition System, so pre-booked customers will have express entry and exit.

Star Parking

This is a meet & greet service, established in 2000. Their facility is about 3 and a half miles from Heathrow and it has the Park Mark from the Association of Chief Police Officers’ Safer Parking Scheme. When you call the company to inform them you have landed back at Heathrow, your car will be brought back within 10-15 minutes for Terminals 1, 2 & 3 and within 20 minutes for Terminal 4. You can have your car cleaned while you are away.

Edward Lloyd

This is a meet & greet service, and a free car wash by hand is offered with every booking. The facility is covered by CCTV and has 24 hour security guards and high fencing. A uniformed driver will meet you at your terminal to collect the car. On landing back at Heathrow, you call them and the driver will be waiting for you with the car outside the building by the time you exit.

Happy Days Parking

This car park is to the North of Heathrow in West Drayton. It is 3 miles from Terminals 1, 2 & 3, 6 miles from Terminal 4 and 4 miles from Terminal 5. The facility is manned 24 hours a day and has CCTV and high fences. It’s open 24 hours and has no height restrictions. For park & ride customers, a courtesy bus runs to all the terminals every 15 minutes between 05.00 and 23.00 and on request outside these times. Sports equipment can be accommodated on board if notified in advance. There is also a meet & greet service. The drivers wear a uniform and are insured to drive any vehicle within an 8 mile radius of Heathrow.

Knights of London

This is a meet & greet parking service. They will call you 20-30 minutes before your arrival time to confirm you are on schedule. You will be met by the driver at the terminal. Customers from Terminal 5 can park their car at the Reserve Valet Parking on level 4 of the car park, without incurring any fee. Their off site facility has high fencing with razor wire, CCTV and 24 hour security patrols. Cars are accepted between 4 am and 11.30 pm.

Heathrow Park 4 U

This is a meet & greet parking service. Their facility is fully fenced, floodlit, with security cameras, microwave detection system and 24 hour security patrols. Cars in their control are road risk comprehensively insured. They will take responsibility for any damage that has been caused by their negligence, but any other incidents have to be covered by your own insurance. You can have your car valeted before it is returned.

Courtlands

This is a park & ride facility by the Heathrow Airport complex, at the North side, on Bath Road. It is owned by BAA and is the official off-airport car park for Heathrow. It is accessed off the M25 and M4. The facility is manned 24 hours, frequently patrolled and has security fencing. There’s a courtesy coach to the terminals which runs every 10-12 minutes and takes 10-15 minutes, depending on which terminal you need. They run 24 hours a day.

Tags: heathrow, heathrow airport transfer, heathrow to dover, heathrow to gatwick, heathrow to harwich, heathrow to southampton

Airpot Transfer | dolphin | February 17, 2012 10:40 am | Comments (0)

Airport Meet & Greet

Illustrates meet & greet implementation

One problem with zone pricing is that it doesn’t suit meet & greet services: Although a surcharge can be applied, the direction of a journey does not determine its use in the taxi journey price calculation. After some consideration we decided that even basing the pricing on the first zone entered would not provide adequate coverage of this service, often offered by Taxi companies providing pick-ups from airports.

With this in mind we have implemented a meet & greet price setting for each zone. This will be applied only if the first stop (or pick-up point) of a journey falls within the zone. This allows different meet & greet pricing to be applied to different zones offering greater taxi price calculation flexibility.

Independent Price Calculation

Because meet & greet is a service independent of distance (or price per mile) calculations, the fee is added to the journey price after all other journey calculations have been made. The only exception is fixed pricing – in this case the price can be manually entered and fixed in both directions allowing for meet & greet to be factored in.

Meet & Greet Implemetation

Within the TaxiMap website plugin, if a meet & greet price is applied it will show up as a note underneath the main price quoted (as depicted above).

Airport Taxi | dolphin | October 31, 2011 4:27 pm | Comments (8)

Minicab Insurance Prices On The Rise

Car Insurance companies decided to make an extra buck on minicab drivers and other private hire and taxi drivers this year (ie. 2011). Average insurance policy went up from what we see about 20-30%. Drivers and chauffeurs, even though with years of NCB- no claim bonus have to expect to pay more this year for their policy renewals. Many claim that this is due to these comparison sites like confused.com, comparethemarket and so on bringing the insurance prices way down in the past few years, which resulted in many drivers underpaying the market rates. Some minicab insurers and brokers say that due to those who got their insurance very cheap the rest have to pay more because there is only certain amount of money for compensations and accident claims.

So it seems to me that again we are all going to pay for underselling of those few companies which irresponsibly were offering cheap car insurance policies just to get new customers with believe they would not be bothered to change the insurer the next year, so they could charge them more for renewals. This was a practise with mortgages too, but with car insurance the hassle of shifting to another insurer wasn’t there. Tt is much easier nowadays to change your car insurance policy than it was years back. With all these comparison sites it takes minutes to get a new insurance and many people don’t care who they are with- they care about the price ONLY. AND if they filled the datails last year these comparison sites will keep their details (I don’t think anyone know that!) so when they come back they don’t have to fill them in again!

For poor minicab drivers, taxi and private hire chauffeurs it usually means that the insurance cost can rise this year as much as £200-£500, sometimes even more! Who to go with then? Were to get your renewal? We found that there is a good source of information about Private Hire, PCO Insurance at- Minicab Insurance website. They have listed some of the well know names there. The online quote system wasn’t working as it seemed there is no single company interested to make one and publish it there! Also the forum seems abandoned, but I can only guess that with so little work around these days for us drivers most of us focus on driving rather than seating on forums. Let’s hope that 2012 will be easier for us all.

Airport Taxi | dolphin | August 4, 2011 4:33 pm | Comments (30)

Minimum age for driving London Taxis, Minicabs and Buses.

How old do you have to be to drive a London bus, taxi or a private hire vehicle (i.e. minicab)- Age restrictions.

Minimum age to drive London Buses

London Bus Doubledecker

Usual scenario for the minimum age for a London UK bus driver is 21. You must have on your license so called ‘D’ category entitlement, or a ‘D+E’ entitlement if you want to be driving trailers which are heavier than 750 kilograms.

Saying a bus we mean a vehicle with more than eight passenger seats. There are however some exceptions. As in many other fields Army gets some benefits. When you a a soldier, a member of armed forces you may drive a bus even when you only seventeen.

Those who are eighteen only can still obtain a D category which combined with a Certificate of Professional Competence (CPC) initial qualification will allow you to drive busses on routes which do not exceed 50 kilometers, this is about 30 miles and without passengers! So you can drive an empty bus for a maximum of 30 miles.

*Age 20 after passing a PCV test and Driver CPC initial qualification when driving on a regular service within Great Britain. The 50 kilometre restriction on the length of the route does not apply.

To get any further info on these restrictions its good to contact directly Driving Standard Agency. You may want to visit their website at: http://www.dsa.gov.uk/

Miniumum age to drive Taxis and Private Hire Vehicles (eg. minicabs, limousines)

London Taxicab

Taxis are regulated in London by a body called Public Carriage Office which is now part of, or a branch of Travel for London. Both Taxis and Private Hire Drivers must be at least 21 years of age in order to be granated either Hackney Carriage Taxi Driver license or a Private Hire Driver license. There are no exceptions here, but councils outside Greater London might have and often have different rules and restrictions, so it’s best to check with your local council what is a minimum age for a taxi ar a minicab driver.

Airport Taxi | dolphin | July 6, 2011 4:20 pm | Comments (5)

Cruise Ships: Benefits And Drawbacks Of All-Inclusive Cruise Travel

All-inclusive travel, whether aboard a cruise ship or at a resort, definitely has an appeal. There are a limited number of hidden costs (though you never fully escape them) and you can hopefully approach your vacation more assured of close to how much you will have spent in the end – certainly a help to budget predictability. However, there are drawbacks to all-inclusive cruising as well. Keep reading to learn about both the pros and the cons of booking an all-inclusive cruise vacation.

First, what does all-inclusive actually include?

Typically, all-inclusive means that your food, entertainment and sometimes alcoholic beverages are all covered or paid for while you’re onboard the ship. For some cruise lines, “all-inclusive” also extends to shore excursions, child care, spa treatments and other extra services. Just don’t count on too many of those other already-covered “extra services.”

So, what are the benefits of all-inclusive cruises?

The greatest advantage of a cruise that includes it all, as perceived by most travelers, is the ability to fully estimate the cost of a vacation, including food and drinks, before you even begin to book it. This feature is especially helpful for families who are working under a tight budget and need to know very close to how much it’s going to cost to feed, house and entertain three kids and two adults for, say, eight days.

A second benefit is the ability to enjoy your vacation without hauling your wallet around, worrying about handling or losing traveler’s checks, or wondering if your MasterCard will be accepted on the ship. All-inclusive trips, including cruises, will either include most items for which you would ordinarily need to pay or allow you to set up an account for any incurred extra charges.

Sounds great, but what are the disadvantages of all-inclusive cruising?

Typically, the most frequent complaint from all-inclusive cruise travelers is the feeling of being “locked in” to a pre-defined and fairly inflexible schedule of events. Often, a cruise ship will have set dining times, specific buffet menus, or limited and highly organized entertainment options. Some travelers prefer to have a choice of restaurants, no set meal times, free and casual entertainment options and the ability to indulge in as many or as little shore excursions as they want.

Another disadvantage to all-inclusive cruising are the hidden costs. Little items like tips, alcoholic beverages (if they’re not included), extra shore trips, small snacks, room service, casino play, or spa treatments can all add up quickly – taking your “all-inclusive” and affordable vacation way over budget. Remember, it’s easier to sign up for a bunch of little bills when you’re thinking that the whole trip is already paid for. Budget travelers need to be especially careful of this common “all-inclusive” pitfall.

So, which type of cruise vacation should I choose?

There are benefits and disadvantages to all-inclusive cruising. The type of vacation you select depends on you – your style of vacationing, your budget and what you want to experience from your upcoming vacation.

Airport Transfers | dolphin | March 3, 2011 8:51 am | Comments (0)

How Airport Transfer Service Can Be Of Great Helpful?

The Airport transfer service adds to your air travel comfort. And it is now being recognized as a necessary part for professionals from all over the world. People in the business sector in the UK also depends heavily on it .And airport transfers plays a major role in their lives. London Air travel providers help people mitigate the travel hassles through their efficient services.

People identifies from their experience the agencies offering the best of services in smooth transferring of their luggage’s and belongings. The fact being that the number of people using aircraft for journey rising day by day, it will not be exaggeration to state that more and more people use such services not only in UK but all over the world.

The airport transfers Heathrow companies are coming to their rescue and ensuring them smooth transfer through safe and advanced vehicles. These days, people prefer to vacation at unconventional places and they could not manage to arrive at them without airport transfer service .Some hotels in UK are offering airport transfer Heathrow service as a part of their strategy for business development. Hence it is no wonder therefore that many tour packages consist of airport transfers as well.

There are many brands providing services in the field and one need to find out reasonably good one for his/her service. First and foremost your intended airport transfers Heathrow company should be a registered one and offer safe and secured vehicular service for transportation. Moreover, you should ensure the experience and expertise of the vehicle drivers. It is when the drivers are acquainted with the flight schedule and airport landscape that you can expect to get the best service.

The airport transport service providers will give you multiple options in vehicular transportation so that you can choose corporate limo bus or van depending on your requirement. Their main objective is to provide you with problem free airport transfers service at affordable price.

The introduction of airport transfer service in London has prevented travelers and their family members from trekking back and forth to the airport regularly. It is the experienced vehicle drivers who usually add to the value of airport transfer service of popular holiday locations. It is because they are personable and help you with your luggage transfer in the sheer comfort of an elegant car. The airport transfers London companies build up their customer base and image on reasonable and quality service. The airport transfer service providers compete with each other to provide customers with the best in quality service at affordable price. So, start comparing the transfer service details of every company and book for the one that assures you complete satisfaction

The airport transport service providers will provide at your disposal so many options .They will provide you multiple options in vehicular transportation so that you can either choose corporate limo bus or van depending on your requirement. It is because they are personable and help you with your luggage transfer in the sheer comfort of an elegant car. The airport transfers London companies build up their customer base and image on reasonable and quality service.

The airport transfer service is offered on a variety of occasions including wedding party to similar other private affairs. Airport transfer service offers similar services with elegant vehicles, qualified, experienced, and well behaved drivers. It has become more popular these days with luxurious facilities like bathroom, air conditioning, seats, TV etc. This is the cheapest option available to any traveler with fixed budget range

The airport transfers London companies build up their customer base and image on reasonable and quality service. The airport transfer service providers compete with each other to provide customers with the best in quality service at affordable price. So, start comparing the transfer service details of every company and book for the one that assures you complete satisfaction.

Airport Transfers, Travel | dolphin | January 10, 2011 8:16 pm | Comments (32)