On this page (4 sections)
What Car Park 5 is
The official long-stay site: surface, 24-hour, camera-run, and built for holiday weeks.
Car Park 5 is where Birmingham Airport puts the cars that stay. It is a surface site rather than a multi-storey, open and running 24 hours a day, covered by the Park Mark safer-parking award, and priced as the value end of the official estate; when a search result says "holiday parking" at Birmingham, this is almost always the car park it means. Being a surface site has a practical bonus: no height barrier, so the loaded roof box, the high-top van and the motorhome all fit, none of which clear the 2.05 to 2.15 metre limits in the multi-storeys.
Like the rest of the estate it runs on number-plate cameras. Pre-book and the barrier lifts off your plate at both ends with nothing to print; turn up and you pay at the cashless machines before you leave. Give the exact registration when booking, because the plate is the whole ticket.
Prices and booking
Rates move with demand for your dates; booking direct and early is the whole game.
There is no fixed price list worth printing: Car Park 5 is priced dynamically, like an airline seat, so the same fortnight costs less booked a month out than booked the night before, and the turn-up tariff on the entrance boards is the dearest way in of all. The play is simple. As soon as the dates firm up, price it on the airport's own pre-book site, book, and forget about it; cancellation-flexible tickets exist if plans wobble. The airport's headline pre-book savings claim runs to 70% on longer stays, and while the biggest discounts attach to the multi-storeys, the direction of travel is the same here: early beats late, and booked beats turn-up, usually by a wide margin.
Whether Car Park 5 is the cheapest thing you can do with a car for a fortnight is a fair question with a longer answer: approved off-airport compounds and hotel-and-parking bundles both play in the same price band, and the cheap parking guide runs that comparison honestly, including the checks that keep a bargain from becoming a story.
From car to check-in
A 5 to 10 minute walk, or a free shuttle every 15 minutes, all day and all night.
The distance is the price of the price. On foot, the terminal is 5 to 10 minutes away, fine with a wheelie case and no dependants. With a full family load, use the free shuttle instead: it runs every 15 minutes around the clock, picking up from bus stops 2, 6 and 7 inside the car park, wheelchair-accessible, and dropping you at the terminal. Budget the full quarter hour for the bus in your timings rather than the best case, and note your bay and stop number before you walk away from the car; surface sites all look alike two weeks later.
Flying at silly o'clock changes nothing here, which is the point of a 24-hour operation: the shuttle is running at 04:00, and check-in for the first wave opens while it is still dark. If a 03:30 start with children sounds grim, that is exactly the case where a hotel the night before with parking attached earns its keep.
Car Park 5 or something else?
The rivals: seasonal Car Park 7, the walkable multi-storeys, and the off-site compounds.
Against Car Park 7, the choice is season and taste: 7 opens for the summer peak across the runway at similar rates, swaps the walk for a 10 to 15 minute transfer bus run for pre-booked customers, and closes over winter. Against Car Parks 1, 2 and 3, you are paying for steps: the multi-storeys put you a minute from check-in, undercover, at a meaningfully higher price for a week. Against the off-site compounds, Car Park 5 buys officialdom: on-airport land, Park Mark accreditation and no third-party transfer schedule to sweat, which is worth a few pounds to most people and not worth twenty to anyone. The full chooser puts all of this in one table.
Car Park 5 also moonlights as the place to wait for a collection, at £12 for up to an hour on the 2026 turn-up tariff, which is its own small subject: the pick-up guide covers timing a landing without feeding the meter twice.