Coming/leaving in different planes: What to do?

It’s so nice to go on vacations, right? And when you meet with your family or friends whom you haven’t seen for a while it is more exciting to go and see them there. Of course you will try to match the dates so you will be together most of the time during your vacations. Note: this blog is prepared in case you all want to spend your vacations in the same hotel, condo, house or villa.

But, why not meeting at Cancun airport with your beloved ones? Will it be possible? Imagine! Meeting them there, riding together to your destination, drinking some beers with them! Nice, ah? Well, sounds nice, but it requires some good coordination in order to make this experience a pleasant one and not a sad one. Why do I say that? Since 2002 that I’ve been in the airport transfers business, and I’ve seen different experiences that have ended in being a disappointment rather than a happy beginning. There are some factors that can help you if you keep them in mind when planning to come in different planes to Cancun and meet altogether at the airport in order to go to your destination.

Once you have your traveling dates, the next step is to coordinate that your group arrives around the same time at Cancun airport. In order to do so, all members who come and leave from/to different cities will have to start googling flights arriving to Cancun airport at an accorded time of the day (for example, if you choose 1:00 p.m., probably a tolerance of half an hour before/after that time might work good; of course somebody will have to wait). But picking an hour is not all you have to think of. Let me tell you what else.

As Cancun International Airport (Aeropuerto Internacional de Cancún) is the second busiest of Mexico, there are different terminals that provide a better traffic flow of planes and passengers. So the flights your group choose might not match in the same terminal. The terminals are not organized according to geographical areas from where passengers come from. They are organized thinking of traffic flow of planes and passengers during the time of the day. So it will be important to pay attention to the small letters that show details of which terminal your plane will be gating when in Cancun airport (one good site I use in order to find this out is Flightview website). But even they try to make things even with the flow of passengers in Cancun airport, still they struggle in the practice, so when some passengers come out from all the arrival process very quickly in one terminal (please read my blog: What to expect when arriving into Cancun airport?), others take long time to come out in another terminal. If this is your case (your group members arrive in different terminals), then this might be an issue. And here’s another issue: there are shuttles provided by the airport that move back and forth between terminals every 20 min or so. You will have to decide who’s moving towards which terminal (usually the ones arriving earlier move). But guess what? Once you get to the other terminal where your friends will show up, the guards won’t let you have access to that area. So you will have to wait till your driver or rental car company (or even taxi company) show up and tell the guard that you are part of his passengers and then you will have access. “Oh, boy!”, you might think, right? We, Playatransfers, have a solution for this problem: for an extra cost, we can pick up your group members in each of the terminals where they arrive (here’s what we do: we monitor all the flights where your group is arriving [2 or more flights]; when all are landed, we will start looking for the ones who arrived in the latest plane; and when we have contacted them, then we will move to the other(s) terminal(s) to pick up the rest of the group). Important: If you’re booking with us and have this situation of arriving in two or more flights, let us know all the details so you avoid non-desired extra costs to your vacations (we’ve had several cases where people do not advise us and the day they arrived noticed us the situation and many realized their friends were not landing in the same terminal).

As you can see, it will be much better that all the members’ flights gate in the same terminal. But this might not be possible.

Finally, it is important to mention that planes get delayed sometimes and the matching time you chose perhaps changes for not just half an hour, but for 1, 2, 3 or even more hours. What to do with your booked transportation? You might decide hiring an extra transportation so the ones arriving earlier won’t waste too much time. But be always in coordination with your transportation company.

Thank you for reading this blog. I hope these hints help you.