Prestige Luxury Travel
The Prestige Luxury Travel Team
With a properly run chauffeur service, a delayed flight simply moves your pickup. Your booking is linked to the flight number rather than a fixed clock time, so the car arrives when the aircraft actually lands. You should not need to call anyone, and you should not be charged for a delay outside your control.
How does flight tracking actually work?
When you book, you give the flight number rather than only a time. That number is monitored against live arrival data, so if the aircraft is running an hour late, the pickup shifts by an hour automatically. If it lands early, the car is brought forward instead.
The tracking also accounts for the gap between landing and appearing. An aircraft touching down is not the same as a passenger walking into arrivals, and the difference varies a lot by airport, terminal and time of day. A sensible allowance for immigration and baggage is built in, so the car is there when you emerge rather than when the aircraft touched the runway.
Will I be charged for the delay?
You should not be, and with us you are not. A delay caused by the airline, air traffic control or the weather is not something you chose, and charging for it would be charging you for bad luck.
It is worth asking any supplier this directly before you book, because policies differ. Some include a fixed amount of free waiting time and charge beyond it, which can become an unwelcome conversation after a long flight. Ask what happens on a two hour delay specifically, since that is where the difference between policies shows up.
What if my flight lands early?
Early landings catch out more transfers than delays do, because nothing prompts anyone to act. If the booking is tied to a scheduled time rather than the flight, an early arrival means standing in the terminal waiting for a car that is not due yet.
Tracking solves this in the same motion as a delay: the arrival is monitored either way, and the car is moved earlier. It is one of the quieter arguments for booking a chauffeur rather than arranging something on landing.
How long will the chauffeur wait?
Long enough to matter. The realistic risks after a long flight are a slow bag, a queue at the border, or a passport issue, and none of those should end with your car gone. Ask how long a supplier holds the car once you are through, and what happens if you are held up beyond that.
The other half of the answer is where the chauffeur waits. Meeting you inside the terminal with a name board is meaningfully different from being asked to find a pickup zone, particularly at an unfamiliar airport, at night, or with children and luggage.
What if the flight is cancelled?
Tell your chauffeur service as soon as you know, because this is the one case tracking cannot solve on its own. A cancellation usually means a new flight, sometimes on a different day or into a different airport, and that is a new journey rather than an adjusted one.
In practice it is a short message with the new flight details, and the booking is rebuilt around them. Contact us as early as you can and we will rearrange around the new plan rather than treating it as a fresh problem.
What about a delayed departure, going the other way?
Outbound journeys work differently, because the risk is the road rather than the aircraft. Here the job is to build in margin for traffic so you reach check-in unhurried, and the airport matters: a short run to a single-terminal airport is far more predictable than a motorway journey around the M25 at an unpredictable hour.
If your outbound flight is delayed while you are still at home, that is usually good news rather than bad, and a pickup can simply be moved later. Our guide to airport transfers, flight tracking and timing covers how departure timings are set.
Does it matter which airport you land at?
It matters more than most people expect, and it changes what a delay actually costs you. A single-terminal airport such as London Luton is straightforward: there is one arrivals hall, no inter-terminal transfer, and a short walk to the car. A delay simply moves the pickup and nothing else changes.
Larger multi-terminal airports add a variable. Aircraft are occasionally reallocated to a different terminal, which matters if your chauffeur is waiting at the one on the booking. This is a solved problem for a service that tracks the flight rather than the schedule, but it is worth confirming that the supplier is watching the terminal and not only the time.
What should you give your chauffeur when you book?
Four details cover almost every eventuality:
- The flight number and the arrival airport, not just the time.
- The number of passengers and how many cases you are carrying.
- A mobile number that will be switched on when you land.
- Where you are going, so the driver can plan the route in advance.
That is genuinely all it takes. Everything else is the supplier doing their job. We track every flight on every airport journey, meet arrivals inside the terminal with a name board, and do not charge for delays outside your control. You can see the full service on our airport transfers page, or read about transfers from Luton and St Albans.
