Advantages of travelling by taxi in summer: how to organise your airport transfer on holiday

In summer, travelling by taxi to the airport makes more sense than at any other time of year: it saves you waiting in the sun at stops and on platforms, hauling your holiday luggage up stairs and through changes, and depending on timetables for flights in the early hours or late at night. On the other hand, demand also rises, so the advice is to book in advance and leave with more margin, because Barajas is busier in July and August.

The holidays concentrate departures on the same dates: the start and end of the month, weekends and long weekends. You notice it at the check-in desks, at security and on the access roads for cars arriving at the terminals. With so many people, the general advice to arrive two hours early for European flights and three for international ones is a minimum, not a luxury.

To work out what time to leave home, there is a guide in check-in and boarding: what time to arrive. And remember to check your passport's expiry date and the entry requirements of your destination country a few weeks beforehand, not on the day of the flight.

Summer suitcases tend to be fuller: clothes for several weeks, beach gear, the baby seat or the pushchair. Dragging them to a station and changing lines in the heat is the hardest part of the trip. By taxi, the journey starts at your front door: the luggage goes in the boot and you do not touch it again until the terminal.

Before you close your suitcase, check what you can take in the cabin and in the hold; we sum up the essentials in five tips for travelling with your luggage on a plane.

The holidays are when whole families and groups of friends travel most. Two practical points:

• If there are five or more of you, or you have lots of luggage, ask for a taxi with up to 7 seats so you can all travel together in one car.
• If you are travelling with young children, you can request a child seat when you book by giving their age; availability is confirmed. We explain it in the guide to taxis with a child seat to the airport.

In high season, airlines schedule many flights very early or very late, when public transport runs reduced timetables or is closed. Some of the cheapest tickets are precisely those, as we explain in why the cheapest flights leave in the early hours. A taxi works the same at four in the morning as at midday, and with our fixed price the amount does not change either.

Our airport fares are fixed by zone and do not go up in high season, at night or on bank holidays: from inside the M-30 it is €33. Check the price for your neighbourhood or town in the fares by area and, if you want to know how far in advance to book, we go into detail in how long before to book a taxi to the airport.