Known once a ticket exists
Toward the Field or Away From It
One direction is a job with a deadline at the far end. The other is a job with an unknown start. They share two addresses and almost nothing else, and an operator prices them differently for good reasons.
- What the desk writes down
- Which way the run goes, and if both directions are wanted, that they are two records rather than one.
- Why no number can be named without it
- Outbound is timed backwards from something fixed. Inbound starts whenever the traveler is actually standing outside, which nobody knows in advance.
- What happens when it changes
- A direction that flips is a different job. The desk places it again and does not carry the answer across.
Outbound: a deadline at the far end
A run toward the field is timed backwards from a moment somebody else set. Everything about it is arithmetic done in reverse, and the risk is entirely at the far end: if the car is late the consequence lands on the traveler, not on the road.
That is why an outbound run is usually placed with more slack than the road strictly needs, and why the hour on the record and the hour in somebody's head are often not the same. That has its own entry in the third moment.
Inbound: an unknown start
A run away from the field starts when the traveler is actually at the curb, which is a fact nobody has on the morning before. The car is not waiting on a clock, it is waiting on a person appearing.
That is the reason this desk is careful about what it says regarding flights: it records a flight number and passes it on, and it does not watch anything. What it does instead is described in the flight number, and what it is not for.
Two directions is two records
Somebody traveling out and back is two jobs. They may be placed with the same operator and they may not, and the answer for one does not bind the other.
The desk writes them as two records for a plain reason: a single record that covers both is a record where a change to one half quietly changes the other, and that is where a booking gets lost.
When it changes
A flip in direction is a new job placed again. There is nothing to salvage from the first answer, because almost nothing about the two runs is the same.
Known once a ticket exists, one of three moments in the intake