Booking a rideshare from the airport always involves a delicate dance. You don’t want to spend a lot of time waiting outside, but you also want to avoid keeping your driver idling while you make your way to the designated pickup—especially if you have to walk a long way or even hop on a shuttle to get there. If you don’t time it right, you may get hit with “wait time” fees or a no-show or cancellation fee if your driver has to wait past the allotted window.
This may be particularly difficult to nail when you land in an unfamiliar city and don’t know how long it takes to deplane, navigate the terminal, pick up your bags, and locate the rideshare area. But both Uber and Lyft have features to help you dial in your pickup time and avoid fees. Here’s how to use them.
Book a ride in advance with Uber Reserve
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Uber allows users to book rides up to 90 days in advance with Uber Reserve. This service includes up to an hour of wait time after your estimated arrival at no charge, which provides a buffer for getting off the plane and through the airport or extended time waiting at baggage claim. Uber also says that it will automatically adjust your reservation time if your flight is early or delayed.
You can cancel a reservation with no penalty up to 60 minutes before your reserved pick-up time—anything canceled less than an hour in advance will be charged in full. Uber Reserve is available at more than 50 airports worldwide.
As an alternative, depending on the airport you’re flying into, you may have access to Ready When You Are, which allows you to book a ride 10 minutes out, 20 minutes out, or as soon as possible, depending on how long you need to make it to the pickup area. Uber also has a “walking ETA” and step-by-step directions to the pickup area built into the app for some airports.
Order a Lyft as soon as you land
Lyft has a built-in time-delay feature for all bookings in many areas, which allows you to opt for a “wait-and-save” ride or a slower standard ride versus the quickest possible pickup (you get a cheaper fare if you’re willing to wait longer). The app indicates how long you can expect to wait as well as comparative fares. That said, it’s possible your driver will show up faster than estimated once they claim your request, so don’t count on the exact arrival indicated if you need some time to get from your flight to the designated pickup area.
Otherwise, if you’re arriving at LAX or either of Chicago’s airports (O’Hare and Midway), you can use Lyft’s new preorder feature to book a ride as soon as you land. It’s like reserving a normal ride, but Lyft will match you with a driver when you get close to the pickup location to minimize everyone’s wait time. You can also indicate whether you need to collect checked bags, and the app will account for that extra time. Preordering locks in your rate, so you don’t have to worry about fares surging.
Lyft says travelers can expect to see this feature at Austin-Bergstrom (AUS) in Texas, John F. Kennedy (JFK) in New York, and Seattle-Tacoma (SEA) in Washington in the near future.
Plan your arrival ahead of time
No matter which rideshare service you use or which airport you fly into, it may be helpful to peruse the airport terminal map (which you can view on Google Maps) and locate the designated rideshare area as well as any required shuttles. While the bottleneck is often deplaning and baggage claim, you can at least get a sense of how long it’ll take to get from point A to point B plus plan for any restroom or food stops along the way.