What’s in the template
This template is built for corporate events where guests fly in and are driven from the airport to the hotel: congresses, sales meetings, launches, incentive trips. Each row is one passenger on one leg. A guest who flies in and out has two rows, one Arrival and one Departure. The lists you send the transfer company, the meet-and-greet team and the drivers all come from here.
- Transfer manifest
- 500 rows, 16 columns. Direction and status come from dropdowns; date and time columns are formatted, the header row is frozen and filters are on.
- Plan
- Arrivals and departures per day, people with no vehicle yet, and passengers and bags hour by hour for the day you pick. It filters by airport and terminal and fills itself in with formulas.
- How to use
- Short notes on the columns, pickup times and personal data.
- Example
- Eight filled rows: two airports, international and domestic arrivals, a family of three, a passenger with no vehicle yet and two departures.
The file opens in Excel, and you can upload it to Google Sheets and work there. Don’t rename the columns; the Plan sheet reads them.
What each column means
| Column | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| Date, Direction | The flight date, and Arrival or Departure. A flight that lands after midnight belongs to the next day, and so does its car. |
| Airport, Terminal | A code such as IST or LHR, and the terminal. |
| Flight No, Flight Time | Landing for arrivals, take-off for departures, in the airport’s local time. |
| Pickup Time | When the vehicle collects the passenger: some time after landing, or when they leave the hotel for a departure. |
| Passenger, Pax | The name as on the passport. If a family or small group shares a row, put the number of people in Pax; a blank Pax counts as one. |
| Bags | For choosing the vehicle. Seats are not luggage space. |
| Phone | Optional. Fill it in only if someone will actually call it at pickup. |
| Hotel / Address, Meeting Point | Where the passenger is dropped (arrivals) or collected (departures), and where they find the car. |
| Vehicle | A code such as A1 or A2. Passengers with the same code ride together. |
| Status, Notes | Pending, Landed, Picked up, No-show, Cancelled. Use notes for anything that changes the vehicle: a child seat, a wheelchair, extra luggage. |
How to group arrivals into vehicles
- See the day hour by hour first. Pick the date and direction on the Plan sheet: you see how many people land, with how many bags, in each hour. Busy hours need bigger vehicles; quiet ones need smaller ones.
- Combine close landings. Passengers landing at the same terminal within about half an hour of each other usually share a vehicle. The wider the window, the longer the first passenger waits; set the window yourself and tell guests about the wait in advance.
- Treat terminals separately. Two passengers landing at the same time in different terminals will make one wait for the other if they share a car. Pick a terminal on the Plan sheet to see it on its own.
- Allow for international arrivals. International passengers clear passport control and customs, so they come out later than domestic ones. Some transfer companies recommend scheduling an international pickup about an hour after landing. That is what the Pickup Time column is for.
- Write the delay rule down beforehand. Agree that if a flight is late by more than a set time, the group leaves and the late passenger gets a car of their own. Set that time with the transfer company; how long drivers wait for free differs from company to company.
- Count the bags. A vehicle’s seats are not its luggage space. Check the bags against each vehicle type with the transfer company; golf bags, presentation kit or a pushchair need room of their own.
- Keep VIPs and speakers apart. Collecting a speaker, the client’s senior executive or a VIP in a car of their own is usually less risky than having them wait for a group.
What to send the transfer company, and when
The transfer company wants to know how many vehicles, of which type, at what time; each driver needs the passenger list for their own vehicle. Keeping the two apart makes both easier.
- First estimate: the per-day and per-hour numbers on the Plan sheet, once flights start coming in. The company plans its fleet from them.
- Final list deadline: agree when you will send the final list while you’re still at the quote or contract stage. Anything after that date is a late change.
- Final list: the manifest with vehicle codes filled in, sorted by date, direction and vehicle. For each vehicle: passenger names, pax and bags, flight number and time, pickup and drop-off.
- Meet and greet: the meeting point, what the name board should say and the phone number of the person on your team to call.
Changes on the day
On the day the list changes: flights are delayed, someone misses a connection, someone never shows. If it’s settled beforehand who tells whom about a change, and how, nobody on the ground has to hunt for the right list.
- Make changes in one file. When three versions of the same list circulate, nobody knows which one is right.
- Have one person on the team follow flight status on the airline’s or airport’s site through the day and pass delays on to the transfer company.
- Mark the Status column: Landed, Picked up, No-show. Decide beforehand how long the driver waits for a no-show and whom they call.
- When a passenger moves to another vehicle, update the code. The “no vehicle yet” column on the Plan sheet shows anyone left without one.
Personal data: only what the driver needs
A transfer manifest holds names, flights, hotels and sometimes phone numbers, and it ends up on a driver’s phone or printed in the vehicle. Data protection laws such as the GDPR ask you to keep personal data limited to what the purpose needs. In practice:
- The driver’s list holds the passenger name, pax and bags, flight number and time, pickup and drop-off. If a phone number is needed, one number on your team is often enough.
- ID or passport numbers, dates of birth, emails, dietary and health details stay off the driver’s list. If a need affects the vehicle, such as a wheelchair, write the need, not the reason.
- Give each driver only the passengers in their own vehicle, not the whole event.
- Ask the transfer company to delete the lists after the event.
This is not legal advice; follow your company’s privacy notice and policy.
Transfer manifests in EventProgrammer
In EventProgrammer you don’t type this list by hand; transfers come from the flights on the guest list. You import guests from Excel, and each guest’s flight, hotel and transfer stay on the same record. Transfers are split by date, city and direction; arrivals and departures are grouped by time window, vehicle capacity and flight number, and guests going to the same hotel can be merged. Each group gets a driver’s name, phone and plate.
You export a passenger manifest for every transfer, or for a single route, to Excel; the fleet report comes with summary, reconciliation, daily breakdown and guest manifest sheets. You open a link for the transfer team for a date, a city or a direction: the team sees groups and passengers in the phone’s browser and, if you allow it, updates statuses (pending, landed, picked up, cancelled).
Worth knowing: there’s no live flight tracking, and “landed” is set by the team; there’s no separate link per driver. This template is not imported as transfers; the flights come from the guest list. See airport transfers for details.