wannabeeahack wrote:
£1 to drop off and pick up thru "rapid stop" area ("no reversing" sign on barrier....pmsl)
Thats £2 on every return fare then!
Oh no it's not!!!
Read the small print at either the incoming barriers or other small notice boards.
It's
£1 FOR THE FIRST 20 MINUTES.
After that it's
£3 for every further 15 minutes or part thereof.
So if you are picking up & your passengers are a little late, & say you are in the 'Rapid Drop-off/Pick-up' car park for 21 minutes, then it's £4; 36 minutes is £7, 51 minutes is £10, & so on.
SO BE CAREFUL!!!
It’s a very nice little earner, which, by some estimates, rakes in a minimum of £3.5 million a year for the airport authorities. And even all Birmingham HC & PH have to pay the same; there are no exemptions.
They call it the price of security!!!
That is why you see queues of out of area HC & PH outside the airport, just off the A45, (coming into Birmingham) at the beginning of the airport slip road. These drivers arrange for their return passengers to phone them directly on their mobiles when they have cleared customs & only then do the drivers proceed into the 'Rapid Drop-off/Pick-up' car park to pick-up their returning passengers.
Otherwise, if you go straight into the 'Rapid Drop-off/Pick-up' car park, & your passenger's flight is delayed by, say, an hour, & then 20-30 minutes to clear customs, your 'Rapid Drop-off/Pick-up' car park charges could be about £20, or more if the flight delay is longer!!!
SO BE CAREFUL!!!
ALTERNATIVE OPTIONS
There are two options that only local cabbies would know about, so I will share them with you;
Option 1.
Drop off for Birmingham International Airport at the Birmingham International Railway Station.
Go into the railway station &
before dropping your passengers, check as you are driving in that the monorail connecting the railway station with the airport is running by looking at the monorail bridge, to spot the monorail carriages are moving/working; 99.9% of the time they are. Drive into the railway station to the mini (painted) roundabout, make a U-turn & drop your passengers at the very back entrance doors to the railway station building. These will be the first entrance doors you come to. Just inside these entrance doors there are some lifts to the first floor of the railway station building, & usually some airport luggage trolleys. Tell your passengers to use the lift to the first floor of the railway station building; the lift is just by the monorail terminal on the first floor level. The monorail goes straight into the airport building. There is slightly less walking for the passengers using this option, than dropping off at the 'Rapid Drop-off' car park.
This option is particularly useful when the airport is very busy.
For return passengers, you will need to make your own specific arrangements, & if you are to wait for them at the railway station, there is a small holding/waiting car park, without a barrier, beyond the mini roundabout on the right, where you can wait for free, if you do not leave your vehicle.
Option 2.
Drop off at the long stay car park with first 60 minutes free & Free Shuttle Bus Service to airport terminals.
Driving into the airport along the A45 from the M42 motorway, from Coventry, turn left (first exit)
at the first roundabout inside the airport into the long stay car park. If you are coming along the A45 from Birmingham,
at this first roundabout inside the airport take the second exit, straight across the roundabout, into the long stay car park. This roundabout is known to local cabbies as 'Dick Bird Island' as it has a large metal sculpture in the middle of the roundabout depicting flying birds.
Once inside the long stay car park, drive forward to the newly brick-built waiting room for the Free Shuttle Bus, which takes passengers straight to the terminal buildings. The shuttle buses run very frequently, about every 3-5 minutes & as often as not, you will be unloading your passengers just as a shuttle bus is pulling up to load. The bus journey to the terminals is less than two minutes. The newly built waiting room was constructed because of the increased use of this service, since the airport roads to the terminals were closed after the Glasgow Airport bombings.
I have used, & continue to use, both these alternative options, depending on traffic & passenger circumstances.
It seems that the roads to the airport terminals are now permanently closed. And this belief appears to be correct, as there have been extra entrance & exit barriers constructed recently to the ‘Rapid Drop-off/Pick-up’ car park & it has been re-designed, with the removal of a covered walkway & re-surfacing & re-painting of parking bays to the whole car park. Also, the entrance & exit to the Novotel Hotel has been redesigned & the flow of traffic to & from the hotel has been reversed too. All this is at an estimated cost of about £500,000, so I don’t think for one minute vehicles will ever be allowed to the front of the terminals again.
The exceptions are; shuttle buses, taxis that belong to the 'BASTA Exclusive Club' which are authorised to pick-up at the taxi rank for arriving passengers only, & delivery & emergency vehicles.
Hope this helps.
PS. If you drop off or pick up near, before or in the vicinity of the 'Rapid Drop-off/Pick-up' car park barriers, or anywhere else on the airport roads, you are quite likely to get a ticket.
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