A chauffeur at the Stansted arrivals barrier with your name on a board, the car in a short-stay car park a few minutes' walk away, and the M11 ahead of you.
Stansted sits in north-west Essex, a little under forty road miles from Mayfair, and nearly everything that lands there is short-haul. Ryanair keeps its largest base at the airport, and the day follows the airline's rhythm: aircraft go out in a wave early in the morning and come back through the afternoon and evening, and the arrivals hall fills and empties in pulses.
It is a single terminal, which simplifies the meeting and complicates the timing. Many aircraft park at the satellite buildings rather than beside the terminal itself, and passengers ride the track transit shuttle to the main building before they queue for passport control and wait for bags. The airport has begun replacing that shuttle with covered walkways as the first stage of a terminal extension, so over the next few years the route from aircraft to arrivals will change more than once. The upshot is that the walk from stand to barrier takes longer here than the size of the place suggests, and it varies from flight to flight.
That is why the pickup time you book matters more than the landing time. Give us the flight number and the time you want the chauffeur at the barrier. The flight is tracked from take-off, and if it runs a quarter of an hour or more either side of the timetable the controller moves the pickup by the same amount, so the margin you chose for the border and the carousel is kept rather than eaten. Sixty minutes of complimentary waiting sit on top of that, for the evening when three flights reach the border at once.
The road is the M11 almost the whole way. It runs south from the airport to the North Circular, and on that stretch the journey is predictable at most hours. What happens after the motorway ends depends on where you are going. The City and Canary Wharf are the easy ends of London from Stansted, reached without crossing the centre; the West End means working across town from the east, and on a weekday evening those last few miles can take as long as the motorway did.
The Stansted Express to Liverpool Street is quick and frequent, and for one person with a small bag bound for the City it is a reasonable choice. The car earns its place when there are several of you, when the luggage is real, when the destination is nowhere near Liverpool Street, or when you would rather the next hour were spent on a call than on a platform.
Stansted has one terminal and one arrivals hall, so there is never a question of which building. The forecourt is for setting down, and Express Set Down is where a departure is dropped; on an arrival the car goes into a short-stay car park and the chauffeur comes into the terminal on foot.
Each figure is the lowest the booking form quotes for that journey on an ordinary day, with the airport’s own parking charge already in it. A night, a bank holiday or the congestion charge adds what it adds, and is shown before you confirm; VAT at 20% is added on top. Price your own journey and the figure you are shown is the figure you pay.
For a departure the car stops at Express Set Down, the barrierless drop-off zone in front of the terminal. It reads the number plate rather than issuing a ticket, and the charge is settled by us from the fare you were quoted, so there is nothing to pay or remember at the kerb.
While the extension is built, signs and routes inside the building will move. The name board goes wherever arriving passengers actually come out on the day, not where they came out last year.
Much of Stansted's flying leaves in the first hours of the morning, which from central London means a very early car. Your chauffeur is named the evening before and arrives fifteen minutes ahead of the time you booked, so the only alarm that needs setting is yours.
Put the two addresses into the booking form. The fare comes back on the measured distance, not off a table, and it is the fare you pay.
Choose the vehicle and the booking type, give us the flight number if there is one, and pay or put it on the account.
His name, photograph and registration reach you the evening before. His live position reaches you on the morning.
On an airport pick-up he is inside the terminal at the barrier, not in a car park. Delays are absorbed by us, not billed to you.
Book it for when you expect to be through, not for touchdown. Allow for the transit from the satellite, the passport queue and, with checked bags, the reclaim hall. If you are unsure, landing time plus three-quarters of an hour is a sensible starting point, and the tracking keeps that margin intact if the flight moves.
Yes. The booking form prices any address on its measured road distance, and from Stansted, Cambridge is the shorter run of the two. Chelmsford or a house in the Essex countryside is priced the same way.
One V-Class, which seats seven and stands seven cases upright behind the rear row. Two saloons would mean two chauffeurs meeting you at one barrier and a party that leaves the airport in halves.
Private and business flights are handled away from the passenger terminal, by the business-aviation handlers on the airfield. Tell the controller which handler and the aircraft registration, and the car is met there by arrangement instead of at the arrivals barrier.
The standing choice for airport and executive work. Rear seats recline, the cabin is quiet at speed, and the partition glass is available on request.
3 PASSENGERS · 3 BAGS · FROM, EX VAT £55/HR
A shorter, faster car for city movements and single-passenger runs where the S-Class would be more than the journey needs.
3 PASSENGERS · 2 BAGS · FROM, EX VAT £45/HR
Conference seating, a folding table and full standing luggage capacity. The car we send when a party travels together and wants to keep talking.
7 PASSENGERS · 7 BAGS · FROM, EX VAT £55/HR
A raised, long-wheelbase SUV for country work and poor weather, with the rear cabin of a saloon. The car to send when the road at the far end is not a London street.
4 PASSENGERS · 4 BAGS · FROM, EX VAT £85/HR