Airport Taxi from Grande Prairie: YQU and Edmonton International

Airport runs are the trips people worry about most, and fairly — a missed flight costs a great deal more than a cab. The good news is that they are also the easiest trips to get right, because almost everything about them is knowable in advance.

Grande Prairie Airport (YQU)

YQU sits just west of the city, and from most addresses in Grande Prairie it is a fifteen to twenty minute drive. It is a small, sensible airport: you are not walking a kilometre from the drop-off to your gate.

Even so, the car is only one part of the timing. Work backwards from your flight rather than forwards from your front door:

1. 1Note the check-in and bag-drop cut-off on your booking, not the departure time.
2. 2Allow the time your airline asks you to be at the airport before that cut-off.
3. 3Add the drive — call it twenty-five minutes from most of the city, thirty-five from Clairmont or Wembley, and more in snow.
4. 4Add ten minutes of slack for loading bags and getting off your own street.

Edmonton International (YEG)

Edmonton International is a genuinely long trip — roughly four and a half to five hours each way in good conditions, most of it on Highway 43 and then the QEII. It is a flat-rate job, quoted before you travel, and it needs planning rather than a phone call an hour beforehand.

A few things people underestimate:

• Give at least a day's notice. A car and a driver are committed to you for the better part of a working day, so it has to be scheduled rather than dispatched.
• Build in a buffer, not a hope. Highway 43 carries a lot of freight. One collision or one closure turns a comfortable margin into a tight one.
• Winter is not a maybe. Between November and March, plan on the trip taking longer than the map says, then add an hour on top of whatever felt sufficient.
• Ask about the return leg. If you are flying back the same week, book both at once. A pickup at YEG for a flight landing at 1am is far easier arranged in advance than improvised.

Why take a cab rather than drive yourself? Mostly parking and winter. Two weeks of airport parking is not free, and neither is the drive home at midnight after a red-eye. With three or four of you the arithmetic gets more persuasive again, because a flat rate splits and fuel, parking and a hotel night do not.

How the price works

Airport runs are flat-rate. You get the number before you travel and traffic on the day does not change it. That is the opposite of a city trip, which runs on the meter and is quoted as a range. Both are set out on the fares page, where you can check a live price for your own trip against the same rates dispatch quotes from.

One detail that matters on a longer run: tell us how many passengers and how much luggage. Four people with four suitcases is a van, and discovering that on the driveway at 4am is nobody's idea of a good start.

Meeting a flight into YQU

If you are the one arriving, book the pickup for a little after your scheduled landing rather than at it — bags take a few minutes even at a small airport. Give dispatch the flight number if you have it. If the flight is delayed, phone as soon as you know; a booking that gets moved is far easier than a car that arrives to nobody.