Gatwick Airport recommends eight car hire companies that have bases around the airport. The list comprises of Hertz, Avis, Europcar, National, Alamo, Enterprise, Dollar and Thrifty – each of which have their own individual upsides. Hertz can offer a global service, with car hire in almost any country you need especially in and around Europe, even young drivers can rent cars from Hertz. Avis price themselves on fantastic service, without a hefty price tag and have many convenient locations worldwide. Europcar offer a special discount when booking through the Gatwick Airport website, and National will allow you to book through the same website to get up to 10% discount on their already-discounted web pricing. Alamo, in a similar fashion to National, will allow you to get 15% discount on their prices when you book through the Gatwick Airport website. For those on a budget, Enterprise car rentals offer car hires from £99 per week, and both Dollar and Thrifty aim to get you the best value possible on the market.

Whilst you may be considering public transport to reach your destination from arriving at Gatwick Airport, you really do lose a lot of freedom by not have your own private car – if you go somewhere without good public transport links, you may find yourself waiting hours for a bus and then finding that it doesn’t go to the precise destination you were hoping for! There is also a question of reliability for public transport in the UK; buses and trains can regularly be late, or don’t even turn up at all leaving you stranded in the miserable weather. The best option is clearly to rent a car!

The ash cloud has resulted in many flights being cancelled from Gatwick airport over the last month or so which has obviously played havoc with many holidays. For these people, it seems as though their plans of a holiday have gone up in smoke unless the plane company is good enough to offer them another flight; something that many of them, to their credit, have done. When people are shifted onto other flights they obviously can’t replace the people who have already booked themselves onto those flights, but it does mean that every flight for the next few months will be completely filled – any empty space will soon go to a person who had their flight cancelled due to the ash. The net result of this is that there will be a heck of a lot of traffic in and around Gatwick airport and, more importantly, there will be a heck of a lot of demand for the car parking service at the North terminal.

At first, this may seem like a terrible thing; with so many people all trying to get themselves parked as close as possible to the airport you would think that it would place an impossible strain on the car parking facilities. Yet, in actual fact the car park at the north terminal is more than adequately equipped to handle large numbers of people parking there. The cost is very low and you can even book online to quell your fears; if you need to park then you can rest assured that you will!