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How to Avoid Airport Parking Gouges

Posted on: Tuesday, 18 October 2005, 09:00 CDT

By Ed Perkins

Big airports rely heavily on revenues from parking concessions to fill their coffers, so you often find sky-high parking rates. Even "long-term" or "economy" lots can charge as much as $16 a day. If leaving your car at an airport is the easiest way for you to get to and from your home, you could be looking at a parking bill of more than $200 for a two-week trip. Fortunately, you can often avoid overpaying. Here are two options to consider:

Find cut-fare parking. At most big airports, parking lots in the airport area, but unaffiliated with the airport, charge less then the "official" lots. Chances are lots near your home airport advertise locally and list themselves in your classified phonebook.

If you aren't sure, however, you can check online: Airport Parking Reservations (www.airportparkingreservations.com), ParkingAccess (www.parkingaccess.com, which seems to pull the same data as Airport Parking Reservations), AirportDiscountParking (www.airportdiscountparking.com), and LongTermParking (www.longtermparking.com) all provide a similar service.

When I did a quick check, most off-airport deals were better than you would get at the airports' official lots. Off-airport rates started at $78 in Boston, compared with the airport's long-term rate of $96; other rates (discount/official) were $52/$78, and $51/$66 in San Francisco. However, off-airport rates aren't always better: At New York/JFK, where the official long-term rate was $60 a day, the best online "discount" rate I could find was $96.

All three sites covered several dozen of the largest U.S. airports. I didn't see any major differences -- many obviously carried identical deals. However, AirportDiscountParking and LongTermParking tended to go in for coupons and other promotional gimmicks.

Many off-airport lots services provide a variety of extras. All the ones I saw offer transportation to and from the airport as part of the basic parking charge. Some offer outside lots, an indoor garage, or both. Some provide detailing and other services on your car while you're away -- including mechanical service at a few places.

Park, Sleep, Fly. Some airport-area hotels/motels offer up to 12 days of "free" parking if you stay the night before your flight departs, although 7 or 14 days are more common. The park-sleep-fly hotel rate is usually higher than the regular rate, but the difference is often less than the cost of parking for up to 21 days.

Many (but not all) hotels offering this service are listed on the Web site www.parksleepfly.com, where you can search hotels that offer the service at 93 U.S. airports plus five in Canada. The site also provides a link to a comparable operation in the UK, with locations at 25 British airports plus nine airports on the Continent. The park-sleep-fly Web site doesn't list all of the hotels that offer a parking package. However, it's the only easy way I know to search out the possibilities.

Rates vary, depending on how expensive the parking is at the nearby airport. In Boston, for example, where parking is an expensive $16 a day, the least expensive 14-night package was $139. On the other hand, at Dallas-Ft. Worth, where long-term parking is $6 a day, one hotel offered a 21-night parking package for $59.95.

Although the Web sites don't always mention it, I've found that many park-sleep-fly hotels will substitute a night at the end of your trip for the usual night at the beginning. But ask to be sure before you commit.

I've used park, sleep, fly on several occasions and found it to be a good alternative to expensive long-term airport parking. Obviously, it works best for relatively long trips of a week or more.

e-mail: eperkins@mind.net

Source: Buffalo News

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