Losing your car at an airport:: what to do

Have you ever lost your car in a car park? What a worry. Is it stolen? Moved by the police? Moved by the parking people? Will you ever find it?

Who will help? How quickly? Where do you think you left it? Which car park?

What is the numberplate? The colour? The make of car?

Lost Car
A relative of mine lost their car for about half an hour on returning to S t a n s t e d airport. The driver noted the car park (three huge car parks) and the nearby bus stop for the link bus to the airport. But when they came back they could not find the car.

Trudging around a car park, although brightly lit at night, when you are tired from travelling and its raining and you are worried is not fun.

Websites
I went on line to try to help. The help lines go off at 6 pm. Nobody to call for help. I remember once something similar happened to us as Disney, I think it was the one in Florida. They had a bus to drive people around. Each car park was named for an animal or something memorable. At least you were driving in the warm. And there was no charge for the help.

Stansted
Back to the problem at S t a n s t e d. (Predictive text called it stagnated. Yes, the driver was stagnated.)

Valet Parking
Valet parking sounds a good idea. Unfortunately the cost is £45! I presume that's on top of the cost of the parking charge. If you are highly paid and on expenses, maybe.

Photos
My solution in an unfamiliar car park, at a supermarket, is to take a photo of both my care and the parking place and the exit I use. I can show any helper the car I have lost. I have a record of the number plate. I know the model of the car. I can't do what has happened a couple of times, forget I am looking for my relative's car instead of mine. If it's a hire car, I know the numberplate.

Number Plates
No good just remembering just the first three letters or the last three letters. I've done that, either deliberately or accidentally (having forgotten the beginning or could not read my writing. It may turn out that all the city's cars have that ending which happened to me (in India), or all the country, or all the state, or all the county (Middlesex), or all this year's cars (UK), or all hire cars have the same prefix or suffix (Malta).

Success
The good news is I got a call half an hour later to say the car had been found. What was the reason for the problem? Two nearby bus stops, went to the one ahead of the car and not behind it, the furthest not the nearest.

Remote Control Sounds
Eventually the driver had thought to try using the remote control door opener. The lock or unlock flashes twice as it does when you get into or out of the car. So you walk along the rows and whether the car is right or left, even a few yards away and in the dark, the remote locates it and alerts you. If you are really desperate you can press on the warning triangle which makes the siren.

Happy ending. But remember not to rush off in your haste to catch the plane, and end up delayed on your return. As the saying goes, more haste, less speed.

Remedies
At least one of the Disney theme parks has or had characters (animals) in the names and visual reminders of the car parks. A multi-storey car park in Paris has or had different colours or murals on each level.

Malta had numbers on each marked parking place.

Call To Action
If you are a regular user of an airport or have any kind of clout please write and ask the airport to address the problem and to provide ways of remembering.

I hope you will always find your car. Happy holidays.
http://www.stanstedairport.com/parking/

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, speaker and author.

Author of How To Get Out Of The Mess You're In