On this page (6 sections)
How long stay works
Long stay is surface parking out by the airport perimeter, one compound for each terminal, connected to the doors by a free bus. You drive in, find a bay, keep your keys and carry your bags to the nearest stop; family bays sit next to the bus stops if you are unloading children and buggies. The bus drops you at the terminal, and on the way home you ride it back out and drive off. Nobody else touches the car in between, which is the structural difference between long stay and the valet and meet and greet products that take your keys.
Two rules catch people at the entrance. Trailers are not permitted, full stop. And while there is no height barrier, the bays measure 2.4m by 4.8m, so a motorhome or long-wheelbase van has no honest way to fit a single space. Everything else on wheels is fine, and the first two hours of every visit are free, a quirk that matters more than it looks: it turns long stay into the airport's cheapest pick-up and drop-off zone as well as its holiday car park.
Prices and the pre-book gap
The published drive-up tariff is simple: free to two hours, £38 from two to 24 hours, then £32 for each further day. Nobody planning a trip should pay it. Gatwick prices pre-booking dynamically, like an airline, and its own headline is that booking ahead saves up to 60% against the gate; consumer-press spot checks regularly find the full gap in school holidays. The tariff is what you pay for not deciding in advance.
| Stay | Drive-up total | Booked ahead |
|---|---|---|
| Up to 2 hours | Free | Not needed |
| 24 hours | £38 | Dynamic by date; routinely less than half the drive-up total when booked weeks out |
| 3 days | £102 | |
| 7 days | £230 |
Drive-up tariff, both terminals. Totals derived from the published £38 plus £32-a-day rates.
Pre-booking comes in well under the drive-up tariff, but the first figure you are quoted is rarely the floor. Check the live codes first, because a legitimate discount applied at checkout is the easiest money the whole trip will save, then book your dates with the code ready.
The bus, timed honestly
Official figures put the bus journey at 10 to 12 minutes, with departures every 10 to 12 minutes around the clock. Read those together: if a bus pulls away as you reach the stop, car to terminal takes about 25 minutes, and Gatwick itself advises allowing a few extra minutes at peak because the buses run busier. The realistic budget is half an hour from parking to the check-in hall, on top of the two hours the airport recommends being there before departure.
That arithmetic is long stay's only real cost beyond the price. For a 06:00 flight it means leaving the M23 before 03:30, which is exactly the case where the alternatives earn their keep: mid stay at the North Terminal swaps the bus for a six-minute walk, and a night in an airport hotel with parking bundled moves the whole problem to the evening before. Both are covered below.
Location and security
Each terminal has its own long stay, and each bus serves only its own terminal, so park on the side your flight leaves from: easyJet flies from North, British Airways from South, and your booking confirmation names the terminal. For sat navs the South Terminal long stay uses RH6 0NY; the North Terminal long stay has no accurate postcode, by the airport's own admission, so follow the North Terminal long stay signs from M23 Junction 9 rather than trusting the map app's pin. The car park layouts, entrances and bus stop positions are mapped on the North Terminal parking and South Terminal parking pages.
Security is better than the bare tarmac suggests. Both compounds hold Park Mark Safer Parking approval and are security fenced, well lit and regularly patrolled by Gatwick's own security staff. Combined with keeping your keys, that makes long stay the low-risk way to leave a car for a fortnight; the horror stories in Gatwick parking belong almost entirely to unaccredited meet and greet firms, not to the fenced compounds.
Booking and changing
Long stay takes drive-up traffic, unlike mid stay and valet, so turning up unbooked works; it just costs the full tariff. Book on the official site when the flights are booked, with the exact number plate, and the terms take the risk out of committing early: amendments are free online up to 24 hours before arrival, cancellation at least 24 hours out brings a full refund with no admin fee, and inside 24 hours there is no refund. Changes made by phone carry a £5 fee, so use the website.
Prices climb as the date approaches and jump in school holidays, which makes the booking rule the same as for the flights themselves: early, online, and adjusted later if plans move. Booking on the morning you fly still normally beats the gate.
How it compares
Against short stay, the split is days versus hours. Short stay costs £70 a day at the gate but sits a four-minute walk from check-in, so it wins for anything under a few hours; short stay parking runs that comparison in full. Against mid stay, which exists only at North, you trade the bus for a six-minute covered walk at a price between long and short stay, pre-book only.
The sharper competition is off-airport. The independent off-airport park and ride sites usually undercut official long stay for a week or more, at the cost of a timetabled transfer and a firm handover process; stick to Park Mark accredited operators and the saving is real. And for early flights, a hotel room with park stay and fly deals attached sometimes costs less at peak than the parking alone, which is the quiet bargain of the whole market. If you have not yet settled on a product, the full parking guide compares everything at both terminals in one place.