New airport taxi ride takes off

KUALA LUMPUR: A new one-way direct airport taxi service has come to town with flat-rate trips beginning at RM18 per person.

Called airport2u, the app is created and run by two former taxi drivers.

Riders can book trips to KLIA or KLIA2 from a set place and could share that ride with two other passengers in the same cab.

“The concept is just like an airline. You buy a ticket, pay, go to a pick-up point and go,” airport2u’s co-creator and chief executive Apriman Darlis told The Star in an interview.

He said riders would have to choose a pick-up point and a departure time at least seven days in advance.

They would then get an e-mail from ­airport2u, telling them how to pay.

After this, the company would then work on fitting that rider with a specific taxi going from that pick-up point.

Apriman said the app had 27 pick-up points, mostly at shopping malls, across the Klang Valley, with each priced differently.

“The pick-up point will act like a bus terminal. We gather the passengers together,” said airport2u’s technical support manager and co-creator Lee Kong Yew.

He said the numerous pick-up points meant that riders need not rely on KL Sentral to get to the airport.

A quick look at the app showed that a trip from Cyberjaya’s The Pulze would cost RM18 per person, while one from the Gombak LRT station would cost RM39.90.

Apriman said a one-way taxi ride to KLIA could otherwise cost about RM85.

He added that an airport2u taxi ride would not be exclusive to that one rider.

Ride-sharing would come into play here, he said, with three potential strangers in the same car on the way to the airport.

He said the company had 35 taxi drivers with them at the moment, and that airport2u would only be using those driving multi-­purpose vehicles (MPVs).

In return for each ride, airport2u will take RM4 to RM10 as a commission, depending on the pick-up point.

When asked who airport2u was for, Apriman said: “We are targeting single travellers, budget travellers.”

Apriman, however, clarified that riders could not take airport2u rides back to the pick-up points.

For more information on the app, visit ­airport2u.com or download it from Google Play Store.