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How Uber works at Airport?

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Coruscate Solutions
How Uber works at Airport?

Like many other people, I love how Uber is making my every trip easy. Thanks to the Uber, I have never missed any of my flights. I have always been fascinated by how Uber is providing such impeccable service. In fact, I have written so many blogs on the working of the Uber. Today, I want to share a similar kind of blog. I want to give you the insight of how Uber works at the Airport. Yes, you heard it right. Uber is working on a different algorithm at the airport. As if this is not enough, they are regularly changing their algorithm and powering it with latest technologies which reduce the waiting time at the airport. 

  • How Uber app was working at the airport in the past? 

In the early days of the Uber, Uber wasn’t using a different algorithm for the airport pickup. They were treating airport pickup same as any other pickup even though they knew airport infrastructure is different than any other pickup spot. But since the number of riders and drivers was limited at that time, Uber didn’t pay much heed to develop different pickup procedure at the airport. 

As the number of riders and drivers increased, airport pickup started demanding a next-level pickup algorithm. Reason for the overnight increase of the drivers roaming around the airport was very usual. Drivers started realizing that picking up a rider from the airport helps them to make more than $100 as all major airports are 40-50 km away from the city center. But due to the lack of dedicated parking spots and a proper algorithm for assigning trips to the drivers, ride-sharing became a nightmare at the airport. Drivers used to park anywhere in the airport and walked around the airport to get the ride request quickly. Security officers of the airport were always on the high alert as unauthorized people boosted the number of activities in the airport. To stop all those chaos, airport authorities of many countries asked a suitable solution from the team of Uber. Airport authorities even passed out a few rules to limit the drivers' activities in the airports. However, they didn’t show their interest to ban the Uber service in the airport as they were knowing the potential of the ride-sharing. 

  • How Uber solved airport pickup problem?   

After Uber understood the urgency to develop a different airport pickup procedure, they came up with a very great idea. Uber convinced the airport authorities to build dedicated parking spots for the drivers and pickup spots for the riders. Apart from this, they rewrote the matching algorithm, specifically for the airport pickup and launched a newer version of the driver app. 

 

In the newer version of the driver app, they have introduced virtual queuing feature for the drivers. When a driver enters into the airport and makes himself online to accept the rides, the app adds him in a virtual queue and gives him a number which lets him know his position in the queue. Now, when a rider requests for the ride, the first available driver from the queue gets the ride request. 

 

  • What are the problems with the Uber’s current airport pickup system?

There is no doubt remained that Uber has taken a revolutionary step by adding a virtual queuing feature to systematize the airport pickup. But still, the virtual queuing feature has its own disadvantages. 

 

One of the most annoying disadvantages of the virtual queue is waiting time between rides. Suppose, Driver A enters into the busy airport and waits 2 hours in the queue to get his first ride request. Now, when he will complete the ride and come back to the airport, he will again need to wait in a queue before accepting the next ride. This unnecessary waiting time lowers the hourly income of the driver which will, of course, never give the pleasing moment to him. 

 

What makes it even more annoying is the wrong estimated time to get the pickup request. Along with the position in the virtual queue, Uber also shows estimated time to reach the foremost in the queue. But many drivers claim that the estimated time Uber is showing is completely inaccurate.   

 

Sometimes, drivers get the request from the nearby places of the airport, even if they are waiting in the airport pickup queue. Moreover, many of the Uber drivers have stated that if they don’t accept those ride requests, Uber kicks them out of the waiting queue. 

  • How is Uber making the airport pickup experience smoother for the drivers and riders?

 Uber is always worried about user experience and so they are making constant changes in the app. Recently, Uber has introduced a new feature to make the airport pickup experience effortless. According to news of the Techcrunch, Uber is piloting a six digit pin feature to speed up the pickup process in the airports. For now, Uber has distributed this feature for only Portland international airport of the USA. However, this is not the first time when Uber is letting riders to get into the car by just showing the 6 digit pin number to the driver. They have also deployed this feature at Bengaluru airport, India and at many other high-density event venues, including Formula 1 race, Australia. 

 

Working of the Uber’s new feature is so simple. Instead of being assigned a specific car, the rider needs to wait at the pickup spot and shares his 6 digit pin with a first available driver. As soon as, the driver adds the 6 digit pin in his app, the ride gets started. 

 

There are lots of advantages of this new feature. Now, the driver doesn’t need to waste time to find the rider in the crowd. Apart from this, with this new feature, Uber can handle more ride requests and provides more earning opportunities to the drivers. 

 

About the Author:

Vishal Virani:

Vishal Virani is a Founder and CEO of Coruscate Solutions, a leading taxi app development company. He enjoys writing about the vital role of mobile apps for different industries, custom web development, and the latest technology trends.

 

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