The crew car park: the walk in the rain, the shuttle that does not come, the space that is yours and the one time it was not
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#1 Birmingham, and the crew car park deserves a thread because it is where the day starts in the dark and ends in the dark and it is, for most crew, the least loved part of the job. Let us give it its due.
The walk
From the far corner (new joiners get the far corner, it is a law), in the rain, in uniform, with the bag, at 4:20, to the shuttle stop. It is 400 metres. It is the longest 400 metres in aviation. There is a specific puddle that has been there since 2019.
The shuttle
Every ten minutes, in theory. Every twenty five, in practice, at 4:20, when it matters. The crew at the stop do not speak. They look at the road. When it comes, there is a silent negotiation about who gets on first that is settled by seniority and rain.
The space
Not allocated. And yet. Every crew member has the space they always park in and the day someone else is in it is a day that starts wrong. I have watched a purser stand in the rain looking at a car in her space with an expression I can only describe as grief.
The one time it was not
The car park flooded, properly, in a storm, and thirty crew came back from a four sector day to cars up to the doors in water. The airline was, to be fair, decent about it. The car was not. The shuttle driver had photographed the whole thing and became a small celebrity.
The car park at 17:00
The end of the day version: the walk back, slower, the bag heavier, the light going, the car exactly where you left it, and the ten minutes sitting in it before driving, which every crew member does and which is the real end of the duty. The car park is where the day is put down.
Your car park. The puddle, the shuttle, the space.
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#2 Gatwick, and the puddle is real and it has a name, and the ten minutes in the car at the end is the truest thing in the post. The duty ends when the engine starts, not at sign off.
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#3 Leeds, and ours is on a hill, in the wind, and the walk from the far corner at 4:20 in January in Yorkshire is a character building exercise the airline should mention at the assessment.
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#4 JFK, and the employee lot is a bus ride from the terminal, in the snow, and the bus is the crew bus from the other thread, and the ten minutes in the car at the end is fifteen because of the traffic on the Van Wyck. Same feeling. Bigger car park.
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#6 Berlin, and the crew car park has a heated waiting hut for the shuttle that was installed after a petition, and it is the single most loved piece of infrastructure at the base. A hut. We fought for a hut.
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#7 Edinburgh, and mine is small enough that the space is effectively allocated by custom and the day someone new parked in a captain's space there was a conversation. There is now a cone.