I get asked about 10-15 times a year by friends and family to either pick them up or drop them off at the airport.
My question is, with the advent of services like Uber and Lyft where you can have a car within minutes by just a few taps on your phone, should this still be a common favor? I can understand that before these services, it was extraordinarily inconvenient to take a taxi from the airport. At busy airports it required waiting in long lines with all your luggage for a cab, so it was reasonable to ask someone for a favor.
Granted, there are a few exceptions. Elderly parents, guests coming from overseas for a special visit, a "choshuve" person etc. But the vast majority of these requests do not fall into one of these categories.
This question came to mind when I recently did one of these "favor runs" to pick someone up from an evening flight, the flight took and extra HOUR to taxi to the terminal due to some reason or another, and the trip took me 3 1/2 hours from start to finish. All this while constantly getting shooed away by airport personnel for waiting out front. Don't get me wrong, I am happy to do a favor and I had a great chat afterwards in the car, but I also had lots of things to do that night, and this literally took away four hours of my time.
So back to my question, is it time that people recognize that Uber and Lyft have taken over airport "favors", and always use those as a first option? Is it time to tell this to people who ask for these favors?
