Measured across 25 airports
Landing late: which airports still have a desk open
A delayed flight is the difference between collecting your car and paying for a night you did not plan. Desk hours are the one thing almost nobody publishes by airport, so we measured them.
Why it varies this much
Car-hire desks keep their own hours, and they vary far more than terminals do. At some airports nearly every supplier is gone by eight; at others most are staffed close to midnight. The figures below come from the suppliers' own published opening periods, not from whether a desk happened to be open at the time we searched - a distinction that matters, because a desk being open at 11am tells you nothing about 11pm.
If you are landing after about 21:00, check the desk hours before you book rather than the price. A supplier that does not publish its hours is not counted as open here, and should not be assumed open by you either.
Where it is best, and where it is worst
25 airports, each figure a median across every sweep of that market. Click through for the full report on any of them.
| Best for you | The share of desks shut by 22:00 | Worst | The share of desks shut by 22:00 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport (CDG) | 4% | Split Airport (SPU) | 94% |
| Dublin Airport (DUB) | 13% | Crete Airport Heraklion (HER) | 82% |
| Nice Airport (NCE) | 19% | Athens Airport (ATH) | 66% |
| Rome Fiumicino Airport (FCO) | 20% | Lisbon Airport (LIS) | 65% |
| Alicante Airport (ALC) | 29% | Porto Airport (OPO) | 62% |
| Larnaca Airport (LCA) | 30% | Madeira Airport (Funchal) (FNC) | 62% |
Every figure here comes from searches we ran ourselves and kept — no supplier supplies us with data, and nothing is estimated. How we measure this.
And what it costs when they will serve you
A desk being open is only half the question. Where a supplier does collect outside normal hours, the fee is already inside the price you are quoted — it is never itemised, so the only way to see it is to price the same car at a normal hour and at an awkward one and compare. We do that for every airport we track.
Measured by comparing like for like: the same supplier, the same vehicle class, the same mileage, fuel policy and deposit band. Across the pairs we have compared, not one came back cheaper at the awkward hour — which is what separates a fee from prices simply moving.
See it for your own dates
These are typical values from repeated searches. The only way to know your price — and your deposit — is to search the dates you actually want.
Search a rental →More measured conditions: the typical deposit held · the share of cars accepting a debit card · the typical second-driver fee · every airport we measure