Outdoor, covered or indoor airport parking: when the extra is worth it

Three kinds of space and what separates them

An open lot is the commonest shape of airport parking: a hard surface, a fence, lighting and marked bays. The car stands under open sky and gets whatever weather turns up.

A canopy or a covered bay adds a roof over the car, and sometimes a wall on the windward side. It stops rain, snow that falls straight down and most of the sun. The sides stay open, so dust, leaves and wind-driven snow still reach the paintwork.

A hall or a multi-storey garage is an enclosed structure. The temperature there moves more slowly than outside, the glass is usually clear in the morning, and after a fortnight the car looks roughly the way you left it.

There is a fourth arrangement worth knowing, because it gets confused with the three above. Some lots sell a covered bay as an extra service on top of an ordinary space, charged for each day of the stay. The car then sits on the same lot, just in the row under the roof.

The season decides more than anything else

In winter it is about frost and snow. After a week on an open lot the roof and the glass need clearing, then scraping, then a while with the engine running before the cabin warms up. Locks and seals can freeze after a thaw that turned cold again.

In summer the problem is sun. A fortnight in full light raises the cabin temperature, tires the dashboard and the plastics, and dark paint takes it worse than light. The first minutes of the drive home are spent with the windows down.

Spring and autumn add the random things: leaves and sap from the trees above the lot, birds, a branch after a gale, hail. None of them is frequent, all of them happen to somebody, and each leaves a mark that has to be dealt with later.

A roof does not solve everything. A canopy stops what falls from above, and only that. Damp, fog and wind carrying grit work under it almost exactly as they work beside it.

So when you pick a space for one particular trip, look at the season and the forecast rather than at a general sense that under a roof is better. A week in a dry September and a week in a freezing January are two different decisions.

The longer the stay, the more the extra weighs

A roof is usually charged for each day of the stay, not once for the whole booking. That frames the decision neatly: on a short trip it is small change, on a long one it grows alongside the rest of the total.

A weekend away or three days on business is a difference small enough not to think about. If peace of mind appeals, take the roof and forget the question.

Three weeks look different, because the extra multiplies across every one of those days and becomes a line of its own. Except that a long stay is also exactly when an enclosed hall earns the most, since in three weeks the weather gets through everything it knows how to do.

Those two forces pull against each other, which is why there is no single answer. The working rule: in summer the length of the trip decides, in winter the weather decides, and in March and October they weigh about the same.

The car itself moves the break-even point

Fresh paint after a repair, dark metallic, a soft-top convertible and a classic are the cases where a roof is bought without doing sums. The risk is not in the cost of the stay, it is in what would have to be put right afterwards.

An electric car in a hard frost loses more range standing outside than it does in a hall, where the temperature moves slowly. A separate text on electric cars over a long stay covers that, together with the battery level worth leaving them at.

Height works the other way. A hall has a clearance limit, and a car with a roof box, bikes on the roof rails or a camper van simply will not fit under it. Check that before booking rather than at the barrier.

An ordinary family car of middling age comes through an open lot with no harm at all. If you want a simple rule: the more the car is purely transport to you, the more often an open lot is enough.

The three kinds compared

Below is the same knowledge laid out in rows, so you can run an eye down it. You will find no amounts there, because every lot prices a roof its own way. What is left is what holds whatever the price list says.

How to check the type before you book

The type of space is in the parking description and visible in the photos of the lot. If the photos show a gate and a surface and nothing mentions a roof, assume an open lot.

Check as well whether the cover is a feature of the whole lot or a separate service added while booking. Those are two different things, and only the second shows up as a line in the price list.

Driver reviews are unusually concrete here, because the state of the car on return is what sticks in the memory. Look for sentences about ice, dust and how the car looked after a fortnight, rather than about how easy the booking was.

That leaves one question only you can answer: on the day you get back, would you rather get in and drive, or do you have a quarter of an hour in you for a scraper. On a short summer trip the answer is usually that the open lot will do. On three weeks in January, pay for the roof.