Taxi beats volcano ash cloud to take executives to Switzerland
Published Date: 17 April 2010
The travel chaos which has seen flights grounded due to clouds of ash from a volcanic explosion in Iceland, benefited a Northampton taxi firm when a desperate group of business people were forced to take a 650-mile minibus trip from the town to Switzerland.
The seven-strong group of executives gave Amber Cars its biggest ever fare after paying £1,200 to dash across Europe in time to catch a further flight to Portugal.
Two drivers set off on the 1,300-mile round-trip at 3.30am yesterday morning, and were hoping to arrive back in Northampton early today after a gruelling 24-hour trip.
Speaking from Dijon yesterday afternoon, driver Antony Berryman said they had stopped three times and arrived in Geneva at 4.15pm. He said: "I've never had a job take me so far, not at all. The furthest I've been is Scotland, up to Glasgow. We're returning straight away so we should be back on Saturday morning. We should get a bit of a break over the weekend.
"The passengers have been fantastic, they've looked after us – they've bought us coffee and lunch."
Amber general manager David Knight said the fare was almost three times as much as their previous biggest tariff. "We've never had a job like this before – I don't think many people have," he said.
"The £1,200 is just for the cost of the drivers. The customers are paying for the fuel and Channel crossings as well.
"Without a doubt it's the biggest fare we've ever had. Usually the biggest fares are about £400 or £500."
He said the clients, who own a firm in Northampton, regularly fly back and forth from Switzerland to work in the town.
He said: "They use us every week for airport runs as they live in Switzerland but we don't normally take them all at once – they're usually in ones and twos. They are the executives from one of our account customers. They were supposed to be flying back on Thursday from Heathrow but they couldn't.
"They had to get back to Geneva so they phoned us that night and asked us to organise a minibus."
Source; http://www.northamptonchron.co.uk/news/ ... 6234431.jp
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