By Andrew Heasley
Melbourne Airport has joined the iPhone age with an app covering flight times, alerts — and addressing common complaints about using the airport — a calculator that computes parking costs and estimates taxi fares.
The free app allows travellers with iPhones to add their specific domestic and international flight itineraries, and receive alerts and updates if the timing or status of the flight changes.
A flight screen shows information in real time of international and domestic arrivals and departures, including airline, flight number, port of origin, scheduled and actual arrival and departure times, as well as terminal and gate numbers.
For those unfamiliar with the airport layout, there are maps of the terminal layouts and of the greater precinct surrounding the airport.
But a boon for travellers — or people coming to the airport to meet or drop off passengers — are two calculators.
One calculates the parking fee, based on the foreshadowed time a car spends in one of the five carparks at the going rates, which differ between the car parks.
For example, an hour of parking costs $10 in the long-term car park, $12 in the multi-level park, $12 in the short-term park, $12 in the Express car park and $60 in the business park.
It calculates the fee on entry and exit times and dates entered by the user.
There's also a taxi-fare estimator, that suggests the indicative fare of a cab ride to any particular suburb, via Google maps.
The "start" location is pinned to the airport location, while passengers enter the postcode of the suburb they're intending to go to or from.
It estimates return fares, so travellers going one way can halve the estimated fare for an indication of what a single taxi ride is likely to cost.
The calculators could help reduce "bill shock", a common complaint about the cost of parking and taxi fares.
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