Alicante airport

Alicante Airport

The ongoing dispute between Elche taxi drivers and "illegal" carriers appears to be coming to a conclusion. A meeting held back in March between the Director General of Transport, Councillor of Transport in Elche - under which El Altet Alicante airport comes under and the President of the Association of Taxi´s in Elche have agreed upon a three point plan.

Up to now Elche taxi drivers have been up in arms that taxis from other regions such as Benidorm and Torrevieja have been "stealing" customers. Officially only Elche taxi drivers can pick up from the taxi rank at the airport but there have literally been physical fights between the drivers when an impostor has been seen.

Automatic License plate reader

One of the measures is for an automatic license plate reader to be installed at the airport, to track the number plates of all those making drop offs and collections. This would automatically flag up those that are making multiple trips. According to the Elche taxi drivers association, there are on average 40 such drivers every day compared to 82 from Elche and they estimate that they loose 40% of their business because of them. AENA, the airport operator will be responsible and bear the cost of this. This would obviously target those making illegal taxi runs for black money - you will often hear and see them advertising locally that they can do a taxi run for cash in hand. But be very careful - they are not insured and there have been instances in the past of them being pulled over and the passengers being told to leave the vehicle by local Benidorm police.

They have also agreed that more police surveillance and inspections will be carried out - currently there are 8 police assigned to the airport. The third measure is to limit taxi drivers from other locations to a maximum of 6 services to the airport per month = 72 per year.

Shuttle Transfers

Buses all waiting for passengers

Many coming on package holiday have bus transfers included - you make your way down to level minus 2 from the arrival hall and you will see rows of waiting shuttle buses. This is where you pick up independently booked shuttle buses too, such as A2B, Travel Republic, BeniConnect - they need to be pre-booked, you can´t just turn up but they are dirt cheap. I have heard of instances of a return shuttle transfer for as little as 5 euros. The disadvantage is that it may be a long journey once you hit Benidorm, with multiple hotel drop offs.

Ground floor for ALSA

If you opt for the ALSA bus, head up to the departures floor and turn right. At the far end you will see the bus stop and queue. You pay the driver on the bus (9.45 euro) and it is an hourly service - but it does NOT run 24 hours a day. They depart on the hour every hour between 10am and 11pm - but please note there is NO bus at 6pm... I can´t work that one out either! Great if you arrive during service hours but otherwise you will be stuck. Bear in mind that the bus only makes 2 stops in Benidorm - on the Avd Europa and at the main bus station, so unless your hotel is very close by you will need to get into a taxi - local buses do not allow luggage onboard.

Alternatively pre book with a registered company. By law they have to have a print off of the names of the passengers which they are collecting to show if requested by the police. If they cannot produce this they will be fined and turned away - this prevents anyone just turning up a pretending that they have a pre booked fare.

So if you are not hiring a car or have a package then give it some thought when you book your flight.

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