A passenger arriving at Tullamarine on a long-haul flight has been in the air for a long time. Singapore is seven hours. London is twenty-two. Dubai is fourteen. By the time they clear immigration, collect the bags, and walk out through the customs hall, they have been awake — in one capacity or another — for somewhere between nine and twenty-eight hours.
This is the person we are meeting.
What we say first
Nothing complicated. We say the passenger’s name, we say our own name, and we say: “The car is ready. No rush.”
No rush. This is the most important phrase in the greeting. It signals that there is no urgency, that they do not need to walk quickly, that whatever they need to do in the next four minutes — check the phone, find the jacket they put in the outer pocket of the checked bag, stand still for a moment and not move — they can do it.
The car is ready. No rush.
What we do not ask
We do not ask how the flight was. The flight was eighteen hours in a pressurised tube at thirty-seven thousand feet. There are two acceptable answers and neither of them is interesting to have in a parking structure at six in the morning.
We do not ask if they have had breakfast. If they are hungry, they will say so. If they would like to stop, we will stop. We ask none of this in the arrivals hall.
The walk to the vehicle
We carry the bags. The passenger walks. We walk at their pace, which is usually slower than our own.
At Tullamarine, we stage in the short-term car park rather than the kerb. The kerb is faster when the timing is perfect. The car park is faster when it is not. Arrivals are rarely perfectly timed.
We have been in the car park since fifteen minutes before the wheels touched the tarmac. We know exactly which door to use. The passenger does not need to know any of this. They just need to know that the car is ready, and that there is no rush.