Have you ever wondered what happens to abandoned cars at OR Tambo and Cape Town International airports?🤯🚗🛩️

Staff and security notice when a dusty car has been chilling in a parking bay for an abnormal amount of time. They report it, and then three things happen. 

1.SAPS (South African Police Service) checks to see if the car is linked to any criminal activities. 
2.Traffic department - verifies registration and ownership details.
3.Banks - check to see if the vehicle is financed and if any payments are outstanding. 

Ideally they trace the owner and get the car collected. If that fails, and the vehicle has overdue bank payments or was the accessory to a crime, it gets repossessed by the banks or law enforcement. 

But what if none of the above happens?

The car remains parked in that parking bay😱 ACSA (Airport Companies of South Africa) does not have the legal right to move or claim ownership of vehicles parked on its property.

The last time I checked, there were approximately 30 abandoned cars at Cape Town International Airport and closer to 50 at OR Tambo International Airport. 

The cars keep chilling, racking up parking fees that run into the hundreds of thousands of rands, and the airport can do nothing about it. And because prolonged parking generates revenue, none of our airport parking lots have time limits💸 

It’s a catch-22 when it comes to making money off parking. While prolonged parking intends to generate revenue, this can’t be done when the car never leaves, and no payment is made. 

Some cars in OR Tambo have been standing still in the parking lot since 2018. 

There was one abandoned car owner who came back to collect his car…😱 He then owed ACSA close to R80 000 in parking fees. They let him set up a payment plan to claim his vehicle. 

I’m sure the more exciting questions for the couch-investigators at home would be who left the car there and why. Were they on the run? And where are they now?🤣🤨🤔

As a property girl, I’m thinking about why ACSA has not developed a policy to remove the cars that take up valuable parking space. Let’s face it, after years of no one claiming these cars, you can kiss your parking ticket revenue goodbye. The parking bay then costs you money while you miss out on revenue. 

Cape Town and Johannesburg’s traffic by-laws allow these municipalities to remove vehicles without compensation after they have been unattended for over 21 days in a public space. If they are not roadworthy, they are auctioned off or physically crushed. 

Why don’t the airports follow this procedure as well?✈️🤔