Appeal Your Airport
Parking Charge Notice
Airport drop-off and pick-up charges are issued by private companies - not the airport authority - and many can be successfully challenged. We handle appeals for all major UK airports for a flat £14.99 fee.
Airport drop-off and pick-up charges are issued by a private company - usually APCOA - not by the airport or the government. That makes the charge an invoice, not a fine. Most of them start the same way: you dropped someone off, forgot to pay the fee or paid it late, and a notice arrived weeks afterwards.
To make you, the registered keeper, pay, they have to follow a law called the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 (POFA) - including getting the notice to you within strict time limits and wording it correctly. If they get it wrong, they cannot legally make you pay. And on airport land controlled by byelaws, that law may not give them a route to you at all. We look for those errors and appeal on your behalf.
Forgot to pay the drop-off fee? Two questions, in this order
Most UK airports allow the drop-off fee to be paid for a short window after you leave, typically until the end of the following day, through the airport's own website. If you are still inside that window, pay it there: the fee is a few pounds and a charge notice is not. The airport's site states the exact deadline for your airport.
Then the window has closed and the question changes. Forgetting to pay does not make the notice valid: the operator still has to have served it within 14 days and got every required detail right. That is what we check, and it is where most airport charges fail. AppealPilot's free deadline calculator checks the dates on your notice. Do not pay the notice before checking - paying settles it for good.
Why Airport Parking Charges Can Be Challenged
Airport drop-off charges are usually issued by a private parking company such as APCOA, not the airport itself. To make the registered keeper pay, the company needs Schedule 4, and at an airport that starts with whether the land counts at all.
To hold the registered keeper liable, APCOA must give a correctly worded Notice to Keeper within 14 days beginning with the day after the drop-off, where no ticket was left on the car. Errors in this process break keeper liability entirely.
You are not required to identify who was driving at the airport. We submit keeper-only appeals that never concede the driver's identity.
APCOA must prove their terms were clearly visible before you entered the zone. Inadequate or obscured signs at drop-off areas are a valid basis for appeal.
Schedule 4 only applies on relevant land, and land where parking is controlled by statutory byelaws is not relevant land. Many airports have byelaws made under the Airports Act 1986. Where they cover the drop-off zone, the operator has no route to the registered keeper at all. Whether they do is a question of fact, so we put the operator to proof.
Paid the drop-off fee online but typed the registration wrong? That has its own rules: paid with the wrong registration.
Appeal Guides by Airport
The legal grounds are the same everywhere, but the operator, the terminal layout and the way drivers get pulled into a charged zone are not. Pick your airport for the local detail.
How We Handle Your Airport Parking Appeal
Submit the notice and any reminder letters. Photos of documents are fine.
We verify NTK dates, formatting, and identify the strongest appeal grounds.
We draft and submit the appeal to APCOA or the relevant operator.
We notify you of the outcome, and take it to POPLA if it is rejected and you want to go on.
Airport Parking Charge FAQ
Yes, and it is the most common reason anyone gets one of these. Forgetting to pay does not change the legal test: to make the registered keeper pay, the operator still has to serve a compliant Notice to Keeper within 14 days starting the day after the event, and get every required detail right. If they did not, the charge fails whether or not the fee was paid. Some airports allow late payment for a short window after you leave, so check the airport's own site first - but once a charge notice has been issued, the question is whether it was served correctly, not whether you remembered.
Airport drop-off and pick-up charges are issued as private parking charge notices - civil debts, not penalties. Whether keeper liability is properly established under POFA 2012 is a key factor in whether they can be successfully appealed.
Many UK airports, including Heathrow, Gatwick and Manchester, use APCOA Parking to manage drop-off and pick-up zones. APCOA is on our covered list, so an unsuccessful APCOA appeal is refunded.
Upload your Parking Charge Notice (PCN) or Notice to Keeper (NTK) and any reminder letters. Clear phone photos of the documents are fine.
No. The entire appeal process is done remotely. You submit your documents online and we handle everything by email and correspondence.
Related parking appeal guides
Airport drop-off zones are run by APCOA. Our full APCOA guide breaks down the keeper liability approach we use on these charges.
Airport Notices to Keeper are often posted late. If the date printed on yours is 13 or more days after the drop-off, keeper liability may already be broken.
Travelling by train instead? Station car parks came inside the POFA keeper liability rules in December 2025, on a timetable of their own.
£14.99 flat fee. Money back if a covered appeal is unsuccessful or out of scope. Takes 2 minutes to submit.