Park life Ground control Kelvin Reynolds on taking airport parking to new heights and updated Safer Parking Scheme support to ensure your car park is a high flier ost of us are familiar with Major Tom: a fictional spaceman brought to life by the lyrics of David Bowie in Space Oddity. Major Toms departure from Earth is successful and everything goes according to plan. However, some time during the journey things go awry: Ground Control to Major Tom: your circuits dead, theres something wrong. Attempts are made to re-establish contact with Major Tom, but his final words in the song (possibly not heard by Ground Control) are: Here am I floating round my tin can Far above the moon Planet Earth is blue And theres nothing I can do. Although most of us are not space travellers, we are air travellers jetting off on holiday or business trips. Many of us leave our tin cans (aka a car) at the airport, expecting it to be there safe and sound when we return. But what if it isnt? What if its lost in space, so to speak. Or worse, M if its taken on a journey, almost as if it were in a parallel universe. Like Major Tom, something is wrong... Commencing countdown, engines on Airport parking is big business. Millions of us rely on it, every day. A recent headline in the Scottish Sun read: Spain Spin Pain: My car was smashed up after an airport parking company took it on a 200-mile joyride while I was on holiday in Spain. The paper goes on to say: The British Parking Association also has some good advice... And we do! Our website includes a whole section called Meet and Greet what to look out for when considering airport parking. The rise in popularity of meet and greet parking has brought with it stories of a few companies in recent years that have behaved appallingly. Its time to bring them down to Earth! After being grounded for nearly two years, our forum for airport parking operators has 47 PN Nov 2022 pp47-48 Kelvin.indd 47 27/10/2022 14:05