This question is usually asked with a specific fear behind it: that a meter is running somewhere from the moment the aircraft lands, and that a slow border queue will quietly become expensive. It is a reasonable worry, because that is precisely how some transport works, and there is no reason a first-time client should assume otherwise.
Chauffeur bookings are constructed the other way round. The waiting is anticipated, accounted for and written into the quotation you agree beforehand, because an airport collection with no allowance would be unworkable for everybody involved. What follows explains what that allowance is designed to absorb and where the honest limits sit.
Why the allowance exists at all
An arrival is not an event with a time on it; it is a sequence with a range. The aircraft lands, taxis to a stand that may or may not be free, disembarks a few hundred people into a corridor, and feeds them through a border hall whose speed depends on how many other aircraft did the same thing in the previous twenty minutes. Then the bags arrive, eventually.
Building a collection around the landing time alone would therefore be pointless. The allowance exists so that the ordinary version of that sequence is already covered, and so that a chauffeur standing in arrivals is doing the job rather than accumulating something. It is why airport work is quoted differently from a pickup outside an office, where the passenger controls the timing.
What the allowance is built to absorb
The allowance is sized against the normal shape of an arrival, including the slow versions of it. A long taxi at a large hub. A fifteen-minute walk from a remote pier. A border hall queue at a peak morning hour. A carousel that takes its time. Those are routine, they happen on a good proportion of flights, and they are exactly what the built-in time is for.
It is not sized for a technical delay measured in half-days, a diversion to another airport, or an overnight cancellation. Those are not long waits; they are different journeys, and they are resolved by talking to us rather than by leaving a car standing at a terminal. Message us as soon as you know, and the collection is rearranged around what has actually happened.
- Taxiing and stand allocation after the aircraft has landed
- Walking time from a remote gate through a large terminal
- Queues at the border, which vary sharply by hour and terminal
- Baggage reclaim, routinely the slowest part of the sequence
- A short pause for a coffee or a call before you come through
Reading the terms before you confirm
The useful document is your quotation rather than a general rule. It states the allowance for your specific collection and what applies once it has been used, and nothing is confirmed until you have read and agreed it. If any part of that is unclear, ask before you confirm rather than afterwards, and we will explain it in plain terms.
We deliberately avoid publishing a universal figure, because the honest answer differs between a domestic arrival at a regional airport at midday and a long-haul arrival at a major hub in the morning peak. A single published number would be either meaninglessly generous or quietly inadequate, and neither serves you well when the day is not going to plan. The version written for your collection is the one that applies.
