The day of departure is looming. Your flight’s booked. Your hotel’s booked. You’ve got a mental checklist of things to pack. You’ve got a great deal on a rental car using one of those car hire comparison websites. You’ve even had a word with the neighbours to look out for anything dodgy while you’re away.

The only cloud on the horizon is the ‘airport experience’ itself. If you’re flying from any of the UK’s major airports, chances are your day will start with a traffic hold-up and get progressively worse (airport parking aside, hopefully!) In fact, it has been estimated that for any destination to which the flying time is under three and half hours – that’s London to Marrakech, for instance – the greater proportion of your journey will be spent waiting for things to happen. Any flying time longer than that and you’ll start to spend more time airborne than you do standing in line on the ground.

How much faster and simpler it would be if you could fly from a smaller airport. One that’s closer to home, where the only two-storey building is the control tower and where you can walk from the car park to the aircraft steps, pausing only to hand your bags to the uniformed attendant.

There are literally hundreds of small airports dotted around the UK. Regrettably, few of them are capable of handling today’s large passengers jets. Many of them are little more than nicely mowed fields with a shed at the end. More accurately they’d be called airfields rather than airports.

One of the country’s smallest commercial airports is at Barra, an island in the Outer Hebrides. If you lived in Barra the airport would be virtually on your doorstep, although in truth most things in Barra would be virtually on your doorstep. Flights to and from Barra are governed by tide tables because the runway is basically the beach. It gets washed by the sea twice a day. Airport terminal facilities include seats, tables, hot and cold beverages and a pay phone. Joking aside, Barra is probably the UK’s most romantic and beautiful airport.

There are plenty of little-known commercial airports close to the major conurbations, too. Just 12 miles from the centre of London, for example, sits London Biggin Hill Airport. (At the last count, there were six ‘official’ London airports, at Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Luton, Biggin Hill and Oxford. Southend is keen to join them, despite being 45 miles away.) Add the smaller grass-and-windsock places and there are nearly 40 aerodromes and heliports in the south-east alone.

Perhaps the most often-seen small airport in the UK is Dunsfold Airfield in Surrey. Although rather than witnessing Boeings, Airbuses or even Cessnas land here, you’re more likely to see Ferraris, Masaratis and Bentleys race around its perimeter track. Oh, and the odd star in a reasonably priced car. That’s right – it’s where BBC’s Top Gear is filmed.

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Insurers have been desperate to recoup these costs and have therefore been passing the additional expense over to motorists in the form of higher basic car insurance costs. It’s a vicious circle, where people’s greed has actually ended up costing the vast majority of people money.

This has led to an increased in the number of motorists searching for cheap car insurance on moneysupermarket.com. Of course, one of the common mistakes that price comparison website users make is thinking that the cheapest deal is always the best option.  This simply isn’t the case, and a number of insurers who offer cheaper deals will be omitting important parts of their package in order to ensure that they can offer competitive prices.

Some of the most common elements omitted are things like legal protection or European breakdown cover. However, is it possible that airport parking could also come into play as a factor that insurers could use to refuse to pay out in the event of a claim being made?

One of the factors which influences your insurance offers is where you intend on parking your vehicle. Cars which are parked in a locked garage or on a secure driveway will be less likely to be stolen or vandalised than cars which are parked on the road. This therefore results in cheaper offers from insurers due to the reduced statistical likelihood of a claim being made. Any motorists who lies to their insurer about where their vehicle is being parked could therefore risk invalidating their insurance policy.

The Telegraph recently talked about the importance of paying for secure airport parking in order to avoid any potential damage or theft. This is corroborated by many insurance companies on their websites, who advise informing your insurer if you intend on leaving your vehicle in a commercial car park when you go on holiday.

However, this viewpoint is not shared by Emma Holyer, the head of specialist car insurance at Liverpool Victoria, who commented: “Unless you’re parking for more than six months it will make no difference to your car insurance policy. The vehicle would be covered in the same way as if you were parking it anywhere.”

It is often said that leaving your vehicle in a commercial car park is done at your own risk, so is it really any different when you go on holiday? The truth is that there is no definitive answer which covers all insurers. The best advice is therefore to inform your insurance company of your intentions if you are planning on leaving your vehicle in a commercial car park when you go on holiday just in case. It is better to be safe than sorry, with the worst case scenario leaving you heavily out of pocket if the insurer refuse to pay up after you make a claim.

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