Gatwick South Terminal parking: every car park

South keeps the choice simpler than North: four products, no mid stay. Short stay means car parks 1, 2 and 3, a covered four-minute walk from check-in, with premium short stay inside car park 3 cutting the distance to about two minutes on the terminal entrance level, in wider bays. Valet takes the keys two minutes from the doors and parks the car for you; the official product is covered in the valet parking guide. Long stay sits out by the perimeter with a free bus and the airport's only genuinely free parking, the first two hours of any visit.

These are the car parks for British Airways, Ryanair, Wizz Air, Vueling, Norwegian, Jet2 and the rest of the roughly 35 airlines flying from South, so match the car park to the terminal on your booking before anything else. The missing middle option is deliberate: mid stay exists only at North, and South's answer to it is either pre-booked long stay or the premium tier, whichever the trip length favours. Parking prices at Gatwick compares the whole market across both terminals.

The drive-up tariff below is the published gate rate, identical at North. Valet sells pre-book only, at dynamic prices.

Drive-up tariff. Pre-booking cuts up to 60% against these rates.

The rules that save money are terminal-blind: book when the flights are booked, amend free online up to 24 hours before arrival, and never pay a quoted price before checking whether parking vouchers that actually work knock it down further. A week of drive-up long stay is £230; booked weeks out it is routinely less than half.

South short stay runs the one published flat-rate deal at the airport: 17:00 to 02:00 for £25, booked in advance. Against the clock rates it is a steal, because those nine hours of drive-up short stay would otherwise cost £70. It exists for the airport's evening rhythms: collecting a late arrival without watching the tariff climb, or a long send-off with someone on the last flight out.

The conditions are the deal's whole small print: South Terminal short stay only, pre-booked only, and the window is fixed at 17:00 to 02:00, covering nothing outside it. Book it like any other official product, with the exact number plate, and the usual amendment terms apply.

South's long stay is the default for holidays: free for the first two hours, £38 to 24 hours and £32 a day after at the gate, and far cheaper pre-booked. The free bus runs every 10 to 12 minutes around the clock and takes 10 to 12 minutes, so allow up to half an hour from bay to check-in when the buses run busy. The compound holds Park Mark Safer Parking approval, security fenced, lit and patrolled, and you keep your keys throughout; long stay parking in full covers booking leads, transfer tactics and how off-airport sites compare.

Unlike its North twin, the South long stay has a postcode that works: RH6 0NY takes the sat nav to the entrance, with the car park signed from the M23 Junction 9 roundabout as a cross-check. Two free hours also make it the honest place to meet a flight: park, ride the bus in, and skip the forecourt cameras entirely.

South is the only terminal with a railway station inside it, and the car parks lean into that. The airport sells commuter parking as monthly, quarterly and annual season tickets in the South short stays, a short walk from the platforms of Gatwick Airport station, which puts London Bridge and Brighton each around half an hour from the car door. For anything less than a season, the arithmetic turns against driving: a single day of short stay is £70 at the gate, which buys a lot of train tickets from a station nearer home.

The other South quirk is hotels close enough to matter to drivers: Bloc inside the terminal, YOTELAIR by arrivals and the Hilton across a covered walkway. For early flights, a room with parking included sometimes undercuts a peak-week parking booking on its own, and it moves the alarm clock an hour later; the packages guide runs those numbers against the car parks above.

Leave the M23 at Junction 9 and the South Terminal has its own filter at the first roundabout; from there every car park is signed individually. The terminal sat nav postcode is RH6 0NP. Kerbside, the forecourt charges £10 for up to 10 minutes, then £1 a minute to a £30 cap, enforced by number-plate cameras with no barriers and payable by midnight the following day; blue badge holders are exempt. The full payment routes, penalties and workarounds are on drop-off zones and prices.

Park on the wrong side of the airfield and the recovery is the free shuttle, about two minutes terminal to terminal, rather than re-parking. Everything else about the building itself, check-in zones, security, food and arrivals, lives in the guide to the South Terminal.

All three South short stays cap at 2m, with a roof box counting towards the height, and bays measure 2.4m by 4.8m; long stay has no height barrier but bans trailers outright. Anything over 2m tall faces a South-specific squeeze, because the 2.4m mid stay is a North-only product: the practical answer is long stay, which has no height barrier at all. Short stay parking lists every limit on the airport.

Electric cars get four 22kW points in the South short stay, first come, first served, and none in long stay. The stronger South option sits on the approach road: the GRIDSERVE Electric Forecourt on Ring Road South runs high-powered chargers around the clock, the realistic way to land back at an empty battery and still get home. Motorbikes park free in the yellow-hatched bays along the short stay levels, no booking and no anchor points, and blue badge bays exist in every South car park at normal rates.