14 January 2009

Airport says no to looking after taxi customers

| johnboy
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The Canberra Times reports that the darkness on the edge of town (aka the Airport) is refusing to pay for “Commissionaires”.

The commissionaires were the people who up until 18 months ago organised the cattle on the forecourt to try and shift them into taxis as efficiently as possible.

Now, despite charging the drivers for the privilege of completing customer journeys, the airport is digging in.

It never ceases to amaze the problems the airport is willing to create and then tolerate literally on its own doorstep.

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A problem that this is causing is that without Commissionaires getting a few people travelling the same direction into the Taxi’s, the people are going one at a time.
So now even more taxi’s are needed to pick up at the airport and people are waiting longer for a taxi.

Last night at about 10.30 there was a connecting flight that landed and between 20 to 30 people needing taxi’s with only 2 taxi’s at the airport at any one time. People were standing there ringing taxi companies trying to book a taxi in their name to go and pick them up.

Vic Bitterman8:09 pm 14 Jan 09

mikey said :

Some US airports now have ‘cellphone waiting areas’ – you wait on the approaches to the airport in a designated parking area for your arriving passengers to call and say they are at the curb so you can swoop in and pick them up.

That is a brilliant idea! But I guess big business misses out on the $ from parking to pick someone up, so it won’t takeoff at privately owned airports here.

Have you even been to the Brisbane airport? The approaches to the airport are all clearly marked ‘no stopping’ to prevent people doing the ‘wait until I get called’ – it’s amazing how many cars seem to break down and and have their bonnets open along the approach road into the airport! 🙂

Jungle Jim said :

You’re all having a great time laying into George and his family for the way they’re running the airport, but have you considered the question, if the Snow’s weren’t running this, who would? and would it be any better?

The Snow family are master corporate business people and will eventually turn our crappy little regional airport into a thriving hub, creating jobs and further bolstering our economic infrastructure.

While it’s obvious which side of the fence I’m currently residing, I will admit that they do often take the relentless ‘quick profit’ idea a little to far (but, in the end, isn’t that what private business is supposed to do?).

They seem to think they are the only ones who have a right to make money or develop anything, just look at the DFS fiasco. They bid for the land for the same reason, lost and cried poor.

Then look at the mess at the airport. All the development without regard to the capital plan, why because they could, then expect the government and the tax payer to fix the road problems they created by not following propper planning procedure, why because they didn’t have to.

Tongue in cheek, tylers: “This is not possible if it’s designated a drop-off only area.”

I’m sure it was probably part of the stated reason, though, as Aurelius says.

It cost us nearly $80 to get a taxi to Gungahlin from the airport a couple of weeks ago, which is kind of ironic considering I can get to Brisbane for $98 return ….

OpenYourMind25:37 pm 14 Jan 09

I wonder if Snow has overextended himself. There are heaps (7?) of brand new buildings at the Airport sitting vacant. Brand Depot is a disaster. How deep are the Snow pockets?

tylersmayhem5:29 pm 14 Jan 09

Terrorism

I assume you were kidding Spitfire! If that was simply the case, then I’d expect there would be no pick-up OR drop off, as it is in every other airport I’ve ever been to. It’s a revenue raising exercise – pure and simple!

Tylers, terrorism and security were the reason at the time.
More realistically, it’s to stop people parking there for a long time, causing congestion, and also not paying for parking.
Drop-offs are quicker than pickups.

tylersmayhem said :

Can someone please offer a theory as to WTF they allow for kerbside drop off, but not pick up…

Terrorism. Barry the mad bomber in his little econovan full of firecrackers would have time to light all the fuses if he was allowed to park there for 10 minutes. This is not possible if it’s designated a drop-off only area. Terry’s just helping us all to be alert not alarmed.

ant said :

This taxi commissionaire thing just highlights it. Snowtown created teh problem whereby taxis can’t get to and from the airport easily (traffic jams), they also charge taxis for the pleasure of coming there (to pick up Snowtown’s passengers!), the commissionaires helped to alleviate the problem by filling seats in teh taxis that did come, and Snowtown won’t pay for them.

Ant, I think you’ve answered your own question. Every taxi that has fare sharing passengers is one (or more!) less taxi paying the airport fees. Why would you pay for something that will lower revenue?

tylersmayhem4:25 pm 14 Jan 09

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – in many parts of the world, people like Snow would have been “corrected” a long way back.

Can someone please offer a theory as to WTF they allow for kerbside drop off, but not pick up…I mean other than helping monopolise the taxi service and/or drivers having to pay the typically exorbitant parking fees?!

Jungle Jim said :

You’re all having a great time laying into George and his family for the way they’re running the airport, but have you considered the question, if the Snow’s weren’t running this, who would? and would it be any better?

If the Snow’s weren’t running it, it would have been better if the Federal Govt hadn’t flogged the bloody airports off in the first place, and had kept them in public ownership instead.

I’m dreading the day there’s a mishap at any one of these privately owned airports around Australia because so many of the buildings that have been built all over these airports are often a bit too close to the runway areas, or directly in front of an over-run area.

That’s the reason there is historically lots of open space around runways and taxiways – it’s a safe buffer zone in case an accident happens – not somewhere for greedy bastards to squeeze shopping malls, offices and other associated crap into!

“They’ll create a problem, then in a few months time, they’ll complain it’s the fault of the taxis.”

I thought the problem came about when the new taxi operator’s didn’t want to contribute to paying the “Commissionaires”, so Aerial cabs pulled them. Same with the city rank. That would make it a taxi industry problem from the start.

It’s a disgrace. Even that giant cash gouging enterprise known as Sydney Airport manages to find room in its mean corporate heart to provide some free curbside pick-up at the domestic terminals. Plus people to manage to taxi queues. Some US airports now have ‘cellphone waiting areas’ – you wait on the approaches to the airport in a designated parking area for your arriving passengers to call and say they are at the curb so you can swoop in and pick them up. We have messed up our privatisation of airports big time, and Snowtown is the most obvious example. Some of the best airports in the US are still run by local authorities. Long Beach in LA is my favourite – it’s like a little country town airport in the middle of the greater LA sprawl. In Australia, you can’t beat Hervey Bay’s airport. Small, efficient, friendly. Free parking for two hours, free baggage trolleys. And locally owned and operated by the council.

Lets get 10,000 hippies, and encourage them to hold hands around the airport.
Call it a Celestial Cuddle Against Congestion and Carbon Pollution.

Sure, it won’t achieve much.

I don’t expect the taxi drivers to take the hit. Doesn’t stop me dreaming.

If the taxis boycotted the airport, who do you think would cop the blame, when Crown Price George gets on the phone to the Chief Minister and the talkback radio?
Taxi drivers are on commission. They’ll chase the dollar wherever they can. And because their pay’s sh*te, to expect them to take a pay slug when even the Fed and ACT govt are too spineless to stand up to Snow is a bit rich.

Ooh – taxi strike at the airport during sitting week – great idea!

What Aurelius said. And maybe there’s a lot of us who don’t want a thriving airport hub in the inner city? I know there’s pelnty of us who are furious at what he’s done to the roads out there, by indulging in rampant property development when the road system wasn’t ready for it. Cynical, greedy and to the massive detriment of thousands of daily commuters.

Perhaps if the taxi operators got together and blacklisted the airport for a few days….

Jim,
Perhaps if Snow paid his bills around town, and behaved like an airport operator, rather than a megalomaniacal overlord trying to ride roughshod over government, and also provided more services than his ‘crappy little regional airport’ currently does, his reputation might not be so easily besmirched?

You’re all having a great time laying into George and his family for the way they’re running the airport, but have you considered the question, if the Snow’s weren’t running this, who would? and would it be any better?

The Snow family are master corporate business people and will eventually turn our crappy little regional airport into a thriving hub, creating jobs and further bolstering our economic infrastructure.

While it’s obvious which side of the fence I’m currently residing, I will admit that they do often take the relentless ‘quick profit’ idea a little to far (but, in the end, isn’t that what private business is supposed to do?).

As others have said, Snowtown have their eyes fixed on making uber-profit as fast as possible. Being good citizens, being decent, that kind of thing, can’t be put on a spreadsheet so it doesn’t rate.

What disgusts me about them is the way they created a horrible problem (the roads) knowing that the government would be pressured to act on it. They’ve held us all to ransom so they could make profits for themselves.

I also hate to see their clever PR machine running lines like “if Tralee goes ahead you’ll all get aircraft noise”, implying without saying that if Tralee doesn’t go ahead, everyone will be SAFE from aircraft noise. This is baloney, but plenty of people have been hooked.

Snowtown is run by cynical money-men, represented by slick PR people, and are poor corporate citizens.

This taxi commissionaire thing just highlights it. Snowtown created teh problem whereby taxis can’t get to and from the airport easily (traffic jams), they also charge taxis for the pleasure of coming there (to pick up Snowtown’s passengers!), the commissionaires helped to alleviate the problem by filling seats in teh taxis that did come, and Snowtown won’t pay for them.

The rules about set-down only are to stop people from parking out front of the terminal for longer than a few moments while they wait for Auntie Jean or their best mate, Bertie to faff around taking their merry time coming out to the car.

Yes, I think it is.

I still don’t understand this “set-down only” situation at the airport…

Is it simply a money making exercise?

Wouldnt it be nice to have a couple of competing terminals run by different organisations.

Mr Evil, they all aspire to be like LAX – a shopping precinct with an airport hidden somewhere.

The Snow Empire is just so typical of so many private airport operators in Australia – make money flogging off as much land on the airport site for development, first priority; then double or triple rents and fees to force as many exisiting tenants off site as quickly as possible to make more room for further development, second priority; operating a fully functional airport, third priority!

And now the redevelopment of the terminal building is on hold because of the global financial situation!

I truly hope you bleed, Snow………

jube_V8Fairlane_235kw10:31 am 14 Jan 09

The commssionaires of old were pretty efficient at organising groups going in the same direction, thereby cutting down waiting times and queues considerably.

Why do you need a dude to point you to the queue? Its not like the forecourt was some rowdy scrum like LAX seems.

If you don’t like the taxi queues you can just take your business to one of the other airports…

… oh.

and then require some government funding help to upgrade the roads?

They’ll create a problem, then in a few months time, they’ll complain it’s the fault of the taxis.

It’s missing basic services eg… …allowing kerb side pickup…

I still do the kerbside pick-up thing, haven’t been booked yet 🙂

I’ve been to every major airport in Australia and New Zealand, as well as a few not so major ones. As far as I’m concerned, Canberra airport is the worst one I’ve been too. It’s missing basic services eg an easy way to get to and from and allowing kerb side pickup, nothing airside (at least on the Qantas side) and a large number of non-aerobridge flights.

It’s also missing international flights, you know, the thing that is normally required before you call yourself an international airport.

From what I have heard it also has some of the highest fees to airlines of any airport in Australia.

jube_V8Fairlane_235kw8:52 am 14 Jan 09

These people are amazing! You want to meet the stereo-typical publc servants of Canberra – just look in to the (private enterprise) world of Snowtown. It was my misfortune to have to deal with these horse-blinkered beaureaucrats on many occasions (in relation to hire cars, but that’s a whole new thread).

Great to see the customer service hasn’t changed since I left!

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