Heathrow has 216% more EV chargers than the next UK airport

Automotive experts Car Lease Special Offers has analysed parking at 20 UK airports, ranking the airports on a number of factors.

Their research revealed that out of 20 of some of the most popular airports in the UK there are only 125 EV charging points. With over 735,000 EVs registered at the end of March, that’s over 5,880 EVs per charger.

Heathrow has 38 EV chargers overall, while the next airport is Bristol with 12. This means Heathrow has 216% more EV chargers than Bristol.

There were also five airports analysed in the study that have no EV charging facilities.  Stansted, Belfast International, East Midlands, Bournemouth and Southend have zero chargers.

Some of the airports are also offering free charging for EVs, such as Southampton and Aberdeen. Leeds offers the longest time for EV charging while dropping off, with up to an hour.

Belfast International Airport was ranked cheapest airport for parking Aberdeen Airport was in second place. At the other end of the table London City Airport was the worst airport for parking. Ranking both last, and second last for every category bar EV chargers.

Prebooking your parking can save you nearly £97 – Based on booking for a July week away, on average, booking in advance could save £96.97 on airport parking. Edinburgh airport is the cheapest airport to pre-book your week’s parking slot, costing £39.99. The biggest saving came from Manchester airport, pre-booking brings the cost of parking for a week down from £360 to only £69.99 – a massive saving of £290.

Car Lease Special Offers looked at the standard turn up and go pricing for drop-off (15 mins), short-stay (one hour), mid-stay (one day), and long-stay (seven days) parking of top UK airports.

They also gathered individual quotes for a pre-booked weekend (5pm Fri-5pm Mon) and a pre-booked week (5pm Fri-5pm Fri), looking at 21st July-24th July 2023 and 21st July- 28th July 2023. This was to coincide with UK summer holidays. The final factor considered was the number of EV charging points that each airport currently has, which was found on each airport’s website or using Zap Map or Airport Parking Shop.

To rank these factors, each airport was given a number 1-20 (best to worst) for each category, the scores were then added together to create the overall airport parking index. The lower the score, the better the rank, and thus the better that airport is to park at.