Lyft and Uber Want Us to Come Fly With Them
At the beginning of the week, I tallied up and ranked five different ways a person could travel between Ballard and SeaTac:
Yesterday, I got a promotional email from Lyft:
Lyft has officially landed at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport! To celebrate, we’re taking $5 off each of your next two rides to or from SeaTac Airport.
I did not take Lyft the full 22 miles between Ballard and SeaTac last weekend, but taking a 6.75 mile Lyft from my apartment in Ballard to the University of Washington Link Light Rail station cost me $20.48 including the Lyft tip. How much might it cost me to get all the way to the airport?
Unlike Uber, Lyft does not have an “estimate fare” feature built into the app, but its website has a fare estimator, and the Lyft website told me the Ballard-SeaTac ride would cost $42 in a Lyft and $78 in a Lyft Plus. (Why do I feel like I’ve never heard of a Lyft Plus before?) So, okay, $42 minus $5 plus $5 for a tip is… $42. (When I tip at restaurants, I tip 20 percent; when I tip on Lyft, I tip “one of the middle suggested numbers.”)
That’s a little more than the Uber cost last weekend, but I also had a $5 discount on the Uber for some reason. Not because I was near the airport, although I would not be surprised to see a similar “let Uber take you to the airport for a $5 discount” email hit my inbox in the near future.
See, what’s really going on here is that, after years of making us all pretend we weren’t taking carshare apps to the airport, either by doing the super-fast drop-off-and-drive-away or asking us to sit in the front seat and “pretend we’re friends,” Uber and Lyft are now cleared and ready for takeoff.
From WSB-TV Atlanta:
Channel 2 Action News learned Monday [Feb 8, 2016] that airport officials will soon go public with a plan to allow Uber drivers to pick up at the Atlanta Airport. The debate has been raging for more than a year.
Miami-Dade commissioners passed an ordinance in favor of ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft. The ordinance, proposed by Commissioner Esteban Bovo, passed on first reading 10 to 2.
Despite concerns the process is being rushed and heavily influenced by Gov. Doug Ducey, the Phoenix City Council on Tuesday [March 1, 2016] voted to advance a plan to allow Uber and Lyft to pick up passengers from Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport beginning this summer.
And so on.
Lyft and Uber are both eager to partner not only with the airports but also with the airlines, as MarketWatch explains:
With the [Southwest] partnership, first-time Lyft users who are already Southwest Airlines rewards members will earn 1,100 rapid rewards. […] Lyft competitor Uber announced a similar partnership with American Airlines last month, in which rewards members can receive a discount and set a reminder to book an Uber along with a flight.
Have you gotten your own Lyft promotional emails, offering you $5 off your next trip to the nearest airport? If you regularly fly with American Airlines or Southwest, did you already know about the Uber and Lyft partnerships?
Also: what do you think Uber and Lyft will do next? I hope they give us codes for free Gogo Inflight Wi-Fi. If that happened, I’d take them to the airport for sure.
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