How Long It Takes from Landing to Getting in Your Vehicle

Why landing time is not pickup time

The time on your ticket is when the aircraft touches the ground. A good while passes after that before you walk through the arrivals hall door, and that gap varies enormously from day to day at the same airport. Which is why the booking asks for the scheduled landing time rather than a guess at when you might be outside: the rest is something we add ourselves.

The three stages

Passport control

The first and usually the longest. How long it takes depends less on you than on how many aircraft landed in the same half hour. Two charter flights touching down together fill the hall within minutes.

The baggage belt

The belt only starts once the bags have been driven over from the aircraft, and the last cases come off well after the first. A family waiting on four suitcases almost always waits longer than someone with hand luggage — every additional case is another chance that one of them is at the end of the belt.

Customs

The shortest of the three, and normally a walk-through. Only beyond it does the public area begin, where your driver is standing — exactly where is covered in how to find your driver in the arrivals hall.

What stretches the gap

• Several flights at once. By far the largest factor, and the reason the same arrival looks different in July than it does in November.
• A large aircraft. Three hundred people at the same passport desk take longer than a hundred and fifty.
• The size of the terminal. At Istanbul Airport the walking distances inside the building cost real time; at Denizli Çardak the belt and the exit are a few steps apart.
• A lot of luggage. Four cases are four chances that one comes last.

What it costs you: nothing

Because we track your flight by its number, dispatch follows the actual landing. Waiting time caused by a flight delay is not charged — and neither is the time spent at passport control and the belt. Your driver is already standing there while you are still queuing; that is how it is planned.

What it means for your planning

For the drive to your hotel: nothing, except that you need not rush. The gap only becomes relevant when something with a fixed time is waiting on the other side — an onward flight the same day, a ferry, a check-in with a deadline. Plan generously in those cases and tell us, so we can place the driving time accordingly.

And if you are travelling with small children, expect the wait in the hall to outlast the drive that follows. What helps is in travelling with a baby.

Common questions