The real choice is not car against train, it is how many separate arrivals you are willing to manage at the curb. One van for a group of seven costs less than three taxis and ends the group chat at baggage reclaim; the same van for twenty-two people becomes two vehicles and a second driver. I cost ground transport in that order every time: headcount first, timing second, comfort a distant third.
Land to curb: the ninety-minute rule
Budget ninety minutes from wheels-down to the vehicle on an international arrival and sixty on a domestic one, measured from the moment the plane stops rather than from the timetable. Bags take twenty minutes on a good day and forty on a bad one, passport control can add thirty in August, and the driver's clock started when you landed rather than when you cleared. Groups lose that margin quietly, so I book against the rule and not against optimism.
For a same-day connection I treat ninety minutes as the floor between landing and the next departure and I refuse to go tighter for a group. The arithmetic is unkind: a missed connection for one traveller is a rebooking, and for twenty-two travellers it is an unplanned night that nobody put in the budget.
Delays on the outbound leg feed straight into this calculation, so I book the arrival transfer against the scheduled arrival rather than a forecast. The driver waits and the price does not move, while the alternative is a group standing at a rank at eleven at night with nothing left on the rank.
Choose the vehicle by headcount
Seven people with one cabin bag each fit in a van, and seven people with two cases each do not, with the difference showing up at the curb rather than at booking. I count heads, cases and prams separately, then add one seat of slack, because somebody always arrives with a pushchair that was never on the list.
- One to three people: the taxi rank on the meter, which beats a pre-booked car off-peak.
- Four to seven people: one private van at a fixed price, driver waiting with a name board.
- Eight to fifteen: two vehicles booked as one order under a single reference.
- Forty people: a coach, and the airport coach bay needs permission in several cities, so ask weeks ahead.
The name board matters more than the vehicle, because four people walking past the rank find a driver faster than any phone call does. I send the driver a message with the flight number and a note of the case colours, and I have never regretted the two minutes it takes.
What the transfer actually costs
Airport to city centre in a European capital runs about 45 to 90 euro for a van of seven, 12 to 18 per person on the express train, and 25 to 35 on the meter for a taxi of three. The train wins on price for two people and loses on time for anyone with cases or a child, since the platform is not at the gate and the lifts are never where the sign says. I compare the total per arrival rather than the fare per head, because that is the number the budget actually pays.
For a group of forty a coach lands near 300 to 400 euro each way, which is under 10 euro a head, and it beats four taxis on both cost and timing. The vehicle that looks expensive per booking is usually the cheapest per person, and the reverse is true of the taxi you take because it was standing there.
Departure: work backwards from check-in
The return transfer is the one people under-price, because the departure has a hard edge that does not move. I start from check-in minus three hours for international and minus two for domestic, subtract the drive, then subtract the traffic window for that hour of the day, and what remains is the time the vehicle must be at the door. That time goes on the itinerary as a figure rather than as the word early, because early means different things to different people in the same room.
A 6am departure on a long drive means a 4am pickup, and if that reads badly on paper the answer is a later flight rather than a braver alarm. I would rather pay 40 euro for a better departure hour than gamble a whole day on a driver and a motorway at four in the morning.
For a group I go one step further and put the pickup time in the itinerary beside the flight, with the driver's number underneath it. A pickup time written once, in one place, removes the only real risk in any departure, which is two people holding two different versions of the word early.
Start with the arrival number: heads, cases, and the ninety-minute rule applied to the actual flight. Once that vehicle is booked and the driver holds the flight number, the rest of the ground plan becomes a sequence instead of a negotiation.