Side to Antalya Airport: Getting the Departure Right

02

Why the way out is tighter than the way in

On arrival your flight number is tracked, so a delay is absorbed before you know about it: the driver simply waits, the name sign is still there at two in the morning, and a late landing cannot make you miss anything. The departure leg has none of that slack. The aircraft door closes at a published time, the check-in desk closes well before the door, and a slow queue at passport control has no interest in why you are behind. Every minute of risk on a transfer home sits in the hour before you leave the hotel.

That asymmetry is why we would rather agree the pickup time with you directly than have a generic figure written on a slip at a hotel desk. It is also the reason the fixed price helps more on this leg than on the arrival: the fare per vehicle is agreed in euro when you book, so if the road east of Aksu is slow on an August afternoon, the traffic costs you time but not money. Nobody is watching a meter while you sit still.

03

Noon checkout, a flight at eleven at night

This is the most common scheduling problem on the Side coast. Rooms have to be vacated around midday, and a large share of the charter flights home leave in the late evening. That leaves eight or nine hours with your luggage already packed and your room key handed back. The gap is normal and everybody who works here knows it, but it is the hotel that decides what happens during it, not your transfer company. One detail people forget: on a late-evening flight the pickup often falls during the hotel’s dinner service, so eat early or take something with you.

Most hotels will take the cases into a luggage room for the day, and many let departing guests keep using the beach, the pool and a shower. Late checkout and day rooms are often possible, sometimes for a fee. All of that is the hotel's call, so ask reception the day before rather than on the morning itself. What matters for the transfer is simple: book the car for the flight, not for checkout. If you would rather leave the resort earlier and spend the last hours somewhere else before carrying on to the airport, say so when you book, because that is a different job and we would rather plan it than improvise it.

• Ask reception about luggage storage, late checkout and a day room the day before you leave
• Keep one small bag with documents, medication and a change of clothes out of the stored luggage
• Book the pickup for the flight time, not for the checkout time
• Tell us if you want to be collected early and taken somewhere else before the airport

04

Pickups before it gets light

Early departures mean a pickup at three, four or five in the morning, and in winter that is fully dark and often wet. The difficulties are never on the D400, which is empty and quick at that hour. They are in the last two hundred metres: resort access roads without street lighting, a hotel gate shut overnight, a barrier that the night porter has to come out and lift, a lobby locked from the inside, and several identical hotel entrances along one unlit lane.

What actually prevents the problems is boring and works. Give the full hotel name and the district when you book, so the right gate is found in the dark. Agree the exact meeting point the day before, whether that is the main gate, the lobby door or the car park. Ask reception the night before who will be on the desk at that hour and whether the gate will be open. Ask for a wake-up call, and keep one phone switched on with our WhatsApp number in it. The driver arrives before the agreed time; a phone in flight mode on the far side of a large resort is what costs the minutes.

05

Leaving Side old town with cases

The peninsula is largely closed to traffic in high season, and that cuts both ways. On arrival the last stretch on foot is a small inconvenience at the end of a journey. On departure it is the same walk, in reverse, against a clock that does not move. Allow ten to fifteen minutes for it, and more if the lane is cobbled, the case has small wheels or somebody in the party is not walking quickly that morning. Early in the morning the lanes are empty; for a midday flight, when you set off around eleven, the same lanes are full of people and delivery carts.

The practical answer is to treat the meeting point as part of the booking rather than something to be worked out on the day. Send your exact address when you book, and if you can, a dropped pin or a photograph of the nearest point a vehicle can legally reach. We will confirm that point back to you. If anyone in the group cannot manage the walk with luggage, tell us in advance and we will talk through what is possible for your specific address — we cannot promise a car to the door inside the pedestrian zone, and it is better to know that a week early than at seven in the morning.

06

The bags you did not arrive with

Two weeks on this coast and most people go home heavier than they came. A rug from the market, ceramics wrapped in towels, boxes of baklava and Turkish delight, a spare case bought in Manavgat for the things that no longer fit. The vehicle that comfortably brought four suitcases from the airport is not the same proposition on the way back, and our capacities are firm limits rather than polite suggestions. And note that what fits in the car and what your airline lets you check in are two different limits: a case that goes into the boot can still be excess baggage at the desk.

So count the luggage you will actually be leaving with, not the luggage you arrived with, and give us that number when you book. Moving up a size at the booking stage is straightforward and the tier difference is a fixed supplement per vehicle, set out on our price page. Discovering the problem in a dark car park at four in the morning is not straightforward at all. Anything oversized or awkward — golf bags, a pushchair, dive kit, a bicycle, a musical instrument — should be named when you book rather than described at the kerb.

• Economy: up to 4 passengers and 4 suitcases
• Standard van: up to 7 passengers and 7 suitcases
• First Class: up to 6 passengers and 6 suitcases
• Minibus: up to 12 passengers and 12 suitcases, or 16 and 16

07

Confirm the day before, and check which airport

A day or two before you fly, send a message on WhatsApp and confirm five things: the date, the pickup time, the hotel name with its district, the number of passengers and bags, and the flight number. Open your airline's app at the same moment and re-check the departure time, because summer schedules do get retimed and the hotel noticeboard is not where you will hear about it. If the flight has moved, we move the pickup. What we cannot do is guess that it moved. If you are travelling as a group, let one person handle the messages: two different times sent by two different people is the hardest thing to untangle at four in the morning.

Check the airport on the ticket as well. From Side itself, Antalya Airport is 65 km and Gazipaşa-Alanya is around 108 km, so Antalya is the obvious choice. At the far eastern end of the coast the two are close: Kızılot, Kızılağaç and Çenger are 80-89 km from Antalya and 80-90 km from Gazipaşa, and some travellers there fly out of Gazipaşa without having registered which code is on the booking. Antalya Airport also has two international terminals with airlines split between them, so check the terminal on your ticket, tell us which one, and re-check it before you travel — airlines are moved between terminals from time to time.