Car rental is quiet at Albany International Airport on Wednesday, March 25, 2020 in Colony, New York (Will Waldron / Times Union)
Car rental is quiet at Albany International Airport on Wednesday, March 25, 2020 in Colony, New York (Will Waldron / Times Union)
Car rental is quiet at Albany International Airport on Wednesday, March 25, 2020 in Colony, New York (Will Waldron / Times Union)
Car rental is quiet at Albany International Airport on Wednesday, March 25, 2020 in Colony, New York (Will Waldron / Times Union)
Even with fewer travelers venturing out due to COVID-19, coming and going from the airport and the rental center can be difficult. It can take almost as much as a short flight to take care of your rental.
This reminded me the other day at CRACF at Dallas/Fort-Worth International Airport.
What is a CRACF? This is short for Consolidated Rent-A-Car Facility. Think of a lot of cars.
My round trip from the rental to the airport terminal took 31 minutes. The wait for the bus lasted 20 minutes and the cargo added another six minutes. The real adventure took five minutes. My flight to San Antonio lasted only 44 minutes.
Over the past decade, CRACF has been a buzzword among airport administrators.
Airports may rate car rental companies from renting, which they cannot do when the company has its own offsite land.
The public’s result at airports is that they remove car rental buses from the road, which relieves traffic. I’m in favor of the blank air and less traffic.
The challenge is long waits for round-trip buses, transportation corporations that sometimes have exclusivity agreements to serve between CRTCs and terminals.
My pleasure at airports is that the absence of CRACF is good news. With competing car rental companies, and no central facility hosts them, each and every one vans arrive every few minutes or so.
Avis knows that if you don’t have enough buses, National or Hertz will borrow your lunch. Maybe I shouldn’t have talked about Hertz, because he’s broke, but you see the picture.
But creating a monopoly for a back-and-forth company is a recipe for a slow service.
This is just the nature of a monopoly: there are many incentives to offer a smart service.
Travelers, however, would possibly retaliate in some cases. If they fly to the Dallas area, passengers can go to Love Field in Southwest. At the smaller Love Field, compared to the D/FW, competing rental vans regularly await you for the four-minute ride to the rental center.
Some airports, such as Orlando International in Florida, Austin Bergstrom International and San Antonio International, have preferred their car rental centers in front of the terminal.
In those cases, the adventure to the car rental center is as fast as you can walk or run. Airports truly enjoy car rentals while charging car rental companies.
But be careful: adjustments are being made. At Tampa International Airport in Florida, the car rental center across the street from the terminal. In the call of progress, it is now an exercise trip, which adds an additional 10 minutes to get your rental car.
I can have a bad time, too. The bus from Terminal C to D/FW was retired when I entered the bus platform on my recent trip.
When the next bus arrived in spite of everything, I asked: Why so long?
The driving force argued that the buses were running every five minutes and that each and every one was controlled through a DISPATCHer with GPS that ensured there was never a long wait.
I couldn’t wait 20 minutes. It was a mystery of life uned! But this has already happened to me at the D/FW car rental center and many others.
In fact, at craCF’s facilities, my reports have been worse.
Before the pandemic, I found many delays at McCarren International Airport in Las Vegas, waiting for the round trip to the car rental center.
Long queues have resulted in waits of up to 30 minutes in the Las Vegas heat. Add another seven minutes to load the bus and another ten minutes to travel to the rental facility. I wonder why an Uber hadn’t crossed my mind.
My worst craFingle delight goes back several years at Thurgood Marshall International Airport in Baltimore/Washington.
It was 5:30 a.m. and my flight was leaving at 7:15 a.m. The wait for the bus lasted more than 30 minutes. Approximately 40 more travelers and I expected the round trip to arrive soon. When the bus arrived in spite of everything, the adventure to the terminal took 10 minutes in a vehicle reserved for status seats.
I made my flight, barely.
The worst position to rent a car at a U.S. airport. It’s Miami International Airport. Coming and going is not to blame as there are no buses.
Instead, it’s a long 10- to 15-minute walk on endless rolling sidewalks. It’s very easy to get lost. This has happened to me several times.
Finally, it is located in an exercise station for the consolidated car rental center. With exercise on standby, you can easily load another 15 minutes of your CRACF adventure.
One way to fight is to be informed of the secrets of an airport you use a lot.
In D/FW, while waiting 20 minutes to go and return to Terminal C, two successive buses marked from Terminal A appeared.
What I learned later is that there is an internal exercise that connects all terminals to D/FW and runs every few minutes. All I had to do was get on the bus from Terminal A and then do the internal exercise.
If I had an idea ahead of me, I’d have come to my door sooner!
Randy Diamond covers tourism and industry. To be more informed about Randy, become a subscriber. [email protected]