UK Airports now charging for dropping off passengers! Don't do it DAA!

Wrex

I really do have such a low opinion of Liverpool and Manchester airports, especially now they actually charge for the luxury of dropping off passengers right by the terminal.
I think this is a step too far for squeezing every last pound/pence a traveller has.

Anyway, not wishing to give the DAA any ideas, do you think they will think of doing this? I hope not!

I do like Heathrow terminal 2 and 5, and Bristol is a nice little airport, but the others i have used in the UK are dirty grotty places, charging you left right and centre for everything.

I believe they’ve said they have no intention of doing this.

In most airports cases that do charge it is because people dropping off have abused the drop off facility and gone in to the terminal to say goodbye or people have used it to pick up people and waited.

Manchester inparticular has a very bad road congestion issue and it’s taken hours for pilots and crew to access the staff car park and as a result flights have been delayed.

jjbrien

Wrex wrote: »

I really do have such a low opinion of Liverpool and Manchester airports, especially now they actually charge for the luxury of dropping off passengers right by the terminal.
I think this is a step too far for squeezing every last pound/pence a traveller has.

Anyway, not wishing to give the DAA any ideas, do you think they will think of doing this? I hope not!

I do like Heathrow terminal 2 and 5, and Bristol is a nice little airport, but the others i have used in the UK are dirty grotty places, charging you left right and centre for everything.

Liverpool still has a free drop off area however its a bit of a walk to the terminal building, if you want to be dropped close to the terminal then its a charge. I dont agree with airports doing this. Should be a free drop off option someplace even if you have to take a shuttle bus to the terminal.

Nijmegen

There's two related issues here: Congestion and pollution. An article I read recently in the economist re Heathrow's third runway showed it well, there's a good graphic in the piece showing that the roads around Heathrow stand out like a sore thumb for pollution concentrations.

"The airport has been slashing its own emissions, for instance by charging gassier planes more to land. But it is not on the airport site itself but at nearby major roads that EU limits are being broken, by people driving to and from it."

There are good arguments for pushing people to take public transport to the airport. Of course, I must jump in before someone points out that public transport links to Dublin airport are (depending on where you live) somewhere between inadequate and non-existent. Naturally you'd need to ensure that getting to the airport is easy before you start charging people for driving there.

ned14

Belfast International also does this. Took a wrong turn looking for the car park and got stung for a pound just to pass by the terminal.

Davidth88

Stansted also charges... 3 pounds IIRC , my brother got stung when he came in to pick me up ( which of course you are not meant to do )

The problem is that people take the p*ss, they come and pick people up but park for 10-15 mins while waiting for them. In these days of mobile phones really there is no excuse for it.

As a side note , in the old days when LHR T1 was still there if you phoned any of the local minicab firms they always told you to wait by the ' coke machine ' , even though the vending machine had been removed years before ...... must have been confusing if you didn't know where it was

steinbock123

Luton as well - I think it was £2 to get past the barrier the last time I was there and if you stop ANYWHERE else they have you on camera and the fine comes in the post.

trellheim

In fairness ( and I think DAA are the worst kind of take-the-money-with-no service types ) the amount of people who take the absolute mickey parked up in the drop-off zones deserve a good hard kick in the nads or a 200 quid towing wagon , who gets half the fine would soften a lot of coughs if you are dropping off to a late T1 departure its worse than the mornings with people who think the rules dont apply cos the polis just can not be bothered policing it.

coylemj

Davidth88 wrote: »

As a side note , in the old days when LHR T1 was still there if you phoned any of the local minicab firms they always told you to wait by the ' coke machine ' , even though the vending machine had been removed years before ...... must have been confusing if you didn't know where it was

I remember the Coke machine, the (very unofficial) minicab pickup point. You went down the escalator to the hall where you could get the elevator to the Paddington Express and it was outside.

I had to go to a company office in Staines which was outside the black cab taximeter area so a minicab was my only option to avoid a whopping surcharge from a black cab driver.

Chris_5339762

Stansted do this. You have to park 10 minutes from the terminal and get the bus in if you want to do it for free.

Its nothing to do with pollution, nothing to do with congestion its pure and simple money grabbing.

Frankfurt as well. I took a wrong turn returning a hire car. But because I drove straight through their was no charge luckily.

Cheshire Cat

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Frankfurt as well. I took a wrong turn returning a hire car. But because I drove straight through their was no charge luckily.

The first 10 minutes are free. Same at Munich airport. Encourages people to make sure they get in and out quickly.

Deagol

Aberdeen airport introduced this fee several years ago. Was 1£ think it's gone up to £2 now. Grotty little airport - charges smokers a £1 to go out into a sh*tty area airside too. Typical awful BAA airport.

Leeds Bradford do this, & the public transport connections to the airport are not good anyway

donspeekinglesh

East Midlands do this too. Got caught when returning the hire car. Cost £1 I think.

ednwireland

leeds bradford charge as well for terminal dropoff have done for a few years now (just saw bubblypop's post ! oops)

noticed gdansk had a 10 minute free kiss and fly point there

Nijmegen

Aberdeen airport introduced this fee several years ago. Was 1£ think it's gone up to £2 now. Grotty little airport - charges smokers a £1 to go out into a sh*tty area airside too. Typical awful BAA airport.

Why not? The smoking area could be used for something more productive; and it presumably takes staff to clean and maintain it. Every other service makes revenue for them, why not smoking?

Its nothing to do with pollution, nothing to do with congestion its pure and simple money grabbing.

Except that congestion does cause issues with airport operations, and airports and municipalities do have pollution targets to meet. The map around heathrow linked above clearly shows this island of pollution not on the runways and taxiways, but on the roads around. The M4 junction 4 just north of Heathrow is a giant red hotspot on any pollution map of London. Using tariffs to push people onto other public transport links is perfectly normal behavior.

inforfun

And to make this less UK only, Schiphol are going to do it too.
An estimated 10 million "car movements" will be charged that way (about 25% of travellers are dropped off this way) and of course it is all about environment and congestion and not about the €50 million they will collect this way.

To be fair.... that airport has a trainstation closer to the gates than where a car can drop you off.
Any time i travel by myself, i ll take the train to and from Schiphol.
But travel with 2 or more and the train will set you back more than what a car would cost you in petrol.
So if it really was about congestion and the environment, make sure a family of 4 can travel cheaper by train to and from the airport.

theteal

Chris_5339762 wrote: »

Stansted do this. You have to park 10 minutes from the terminal and get the bus in if you want to do it for free.

Its nothing to do with pollution, nothing to do with congestion its pure and simple money grabbing.

Yup, Stansted have done this for years and the price has jumped a couple of times since, £3 the last time I was there. Southend have reduced their free drop off time from 15mins to 5 and it’s almost a fiver then for the hour.

I would imagine something similar at some Irish airports is inevitable, it’s just a matter of when, not if.





Edit: i's just come up in conversation in the office, Stansted drop off is now £3.50 :eek:

Cookiemunster

Cheshire Cat wrote: »

The first 10 minutes are free. Same at Munich airport. Encourages people to make sure they get in and out quickly.

Shannon do this too, but you get 15mins.

LXFlyer

Deagol wrote: »

Aberdeen airport introduced this fee several years ago. Was 1£ think it's gone up to £2 now. Grotty little airport - charges smokers a £1 to go out into a sh*tty area airside too. Typical awful BAA airport.

BAA hasn’t existed since 2012!!

Aberdeen is run by AGS Airports which also run Glasgow and Southampton.

Nijmegen

inforfun wrote: »

But travel with 2 or more and the train will set you back more than what a car would cost you in petrol.
So if it really was about congestion and the environment, make sure a family of 4 can travel cheaper by train to and from the airport.

That's the entire idea of the charges. They're designed to promote a new behavior by artificially raising the price of the old behavior. Government policy could drive a cheaper rail fare to the airport; but the airport authority by itself cannot do this. It's like Heathrow wanting local councils to bring in congestion charges - It's not in the airports power to affect this, and local councils are leery for various reasons. A charge at the front door is within the airports control and so is something they can (and do) do.

It's something we maybe don't always consider: Dublin airport (and others) have record numbers of passengers (something like +300m passengers YoY worldwide according to an interview I saw with the President of Emirates on CNN) and the amount of roads leading into the airports probably isn't increasing at the same pace. The amount of kerb space outside T1 and T2 in Dublin is the same now as it ever was, and actually there's pretty much the same amount of access road into the airport generally. You need to make some changes, and scoffing just because the airport will make some cash off of it misses the point - You need to change the consumer behavior, and any economist will tell you that a pretty simple way to do that is to slap a charge onto it.

faceman

Some Spanish airports have barriers at the drop off area. You take a ticket but if you’re longer than I think 15 mins you have to pay to get out.

Dublin airport could do with an official waiting area similar to some airports in the states. I know people use the old airport roads for waiting but it’s usually filled with people riding or doing drugs!

L1011

Same setup in Porto - 10 or 15mins free for either dropoff or pickup

Pat Dunne

faceman wrote: »

I know people use the old airport roads for waiting but it’s usually filled with people riding or doing drugs!

Don't forget the Dedicated Spotters!

questionmark?

Wrex wrote: »

I do like Heathrow terminal 2 and 5, and Bristol is a nice little airport, but the others i have used in the UK are dirty grotty places, charging you left right and centre for everything.

The official drop off zone in Bristol also has a charge. £1.

eusap

If you take the wrong turn leaving Madrid airport T4 you go straight into a Tolled Tunnel and costs €2, bit harsh after arriving into strange airport and picking up rental car etc... and then only signposts are via the Tolled Route.



In the UK most of the old drop off zones in front of the Airports (drop at door) were closed off for security reasons and then they had to take the old short term surface car parks for drop offs hence why they started charging for the space

trellheim

In the UK most of the old drop off zones in front of the Airports (drop at door) were closed off for security reasons and then they had to take the old short term surface car parks for drop offs hence why they started charging for the space

Bollards in most airports solved this after Glasgow but it turned into an obsessive drive with profits.

donkey balls

BFS have been charging £1 for years a friend of mine whose from Manchester posted a link about the charges on FB the video was from the lad bible I think,
The lad in the video said that the charge was £4 put goes up to £25 after 5 mins if I remember, Sure like most things that originate across the pond it is only a matter of time before it happens here.

Gooser14

Cookiemunster wrote:

Shannon do this too, but you get 15mins.

When was it introduced at Shannon?

Cookiemunster

Gooser14 wrote: »

When was it introduced at Shannon?

2014.