You park at the airport you drive to, for the dates of your whole trip, and the connection itself changes nothing about the booking. The risk is not the parking — it is the return date, which a missed connection can move by a day.
That sounds obvious and it catches people out regularly, because itineraries with connections are described by their final destination rather than their first airport.
Which airport do I book parking at?
The one you physically drive to and leave the car at. If you drive to Manchester and connect through Amsterdam, you book Manchester parking.
The connecting airport is irrelevant to the car. It is worth stating because booking systems ask for a destination on flights and a location on parking, and people occasionally enter the wrong one when doing both in the same session.
What dates should the booking cover?
From when you arrive at the car park to when you collect the car, not your flight times.
On a connecting itinerary those can differ by more than you expect. A trip that departs on Monday morning and lands back late on Sunday night is an eight-day booking, not a seven-day one, and getting that wrong is the most expensive error available.
Count the days the car is actually there. Then check it again before paying.
The car does not care about your itinerary. It cares about the day you leave it and the day you come back, and those are the only two dates on the booking.
What happens if I miss a connection?
Your return is delayed, which means your parking may overstay. This is the real risk on a connecting itinerary.
A missed connection on the way home can push you into the next day. The car park does not know this unless you tell them, and an overstay charge is usually higher than the equivalent booked day.
Two things protect you:
Give the operator your flight number — specifically the final leg into the UK, not the first leg out
Ring them as soon as you know, from the connecting airport if you can
Most operators handle genuine delays sympathetically. What they handle badly is silence followed by a car collected a day late.
Which flight number do they actually want?
The inbound one that lands at the airport where your car is. That is the flight whose arrival they can track.
On a two-leg return, the first leg is irrelevant to them. If the booking form only accepts one flight number, use the final inbound leg.
Does a long layover change anything?
Only through the total trip length, which affects the price band. A twelve-hour layover each way adds a day to the trip and may push you from a seven-day booking to eight or nine.
That is worth checking because the daily rate falls as the trip lengthens, so a longer booking is not proportionally more expensive. It is still cheaper to book the right length than to overstay.
Should I book a flexible rate?
More so than on a direct flight. Connections introduce an extra point of failure, and missed connections are considerably more common than cancelled direct flights.
The premium is small against an overstay charge or a booking that no longer matches your return. On an itinerary with a tight connection, it is the sensible default.
What if I am flying out of one UK airport and back into another?
This is the one case where parking genuinely does not work. Your car is at the departure airport and you are not.
Options are a train or coach between the two, a lift, or not parking at all. It is worth pricing the whole journey before booking a flight that returns to a different airport, because the cost of getting back to your car can exceed the saving on the fare.
Open-jaw itineraries within the UK are rare but they do happen, particularly on rerouted or disrupted bookings.
A short checklist
Book parking at the airport you drive to
Count the days the car is actually there, not the flight dates
Give the operator the final inbound flight number
Choose a flexible rate if the connection is tight
Ring the operator from the connecting airport if things go wrong
Check the return date twice before paying
Compare options and terms for your dates at Heathrow, Birmingham or wherever you are leaving the car. Delay handling matters more on a connecting trip than a pound on the daily rate.