This car has been parked at the airport in Johannesburg since 2010. No one is coming for this as the outstanding parking bill is between $60 - $70K. The problem is the airport is a government run company so no one is thinking of this could be a problem and how can we resolve this.
A story surfaced last week that the airports in South Africa are facing a new increasing problem that they have no legal procedure to follow. This is when cars are abandoned in their parking lots and the owners never return.
Currently Johannesburg (OR Tambo) Airport has 70 cars abandoned across various floors in it's parking facility with some of these cars dating back to 2018 and even older than this. Cape Town has roughly 30 cars currently and until the airport draughts a legal proposal that is approved by whoever approves these policies then these cars will remain exactly where they are.
The obvious one is for thieves to abandon a car, but these days I doubt that is even a thing as there are cameras everywhere in these parking places. The other one would be someone emigrating realizing they owe money on the vehicle and has no real value to themselves so they just leave the car behind.
All the airports can do is to reach out to the police and banks and see if there is anything showing on their systems. If there is money outstanding owing to the banks then they could come and repossess or claim the vehicle. If none of these have records then the car sits as the airport has nowhere else to turn for assistance.
There was a case a few years ago when someone returned and had to pay their parking bill for the car which was at R80K and had been sitting for longer than 1 year. R80K is roughly $4.8K and sounds like someone just wasted their money on an expensive parking ticket.
The 70 cars in Johannesburg have all been checked out and these will not be claimed and most likely was intended to happen that way. Some people I guess could have died whilst abroad and this was an unfortunate unplanned result with the car left behind. I have never forgotten 9/11 seeing all those cars left behind in parking lots from those that had perished in the terrorist attacks and those images tell a tragic story.
The airport stated that they are in a catch 22 situation as they make money the longer the car sits which is true only if it is claimed. A car sitting for 8 years however is costing them money as it is taking up one parking space and common sense should be used knowing what the value of the vehicle would be versus the cost of the parking bill. It is no wonder that this has become a problem with that type of thinking and if left to continue there will be hundreds of cars over the next decade just sitting gathering dust costing the airport money.
If this was a company run parking business then this would not have been a problem and this issue would have been addressed years ago. International airports around the world have policies in place and normally let the road tax expire first before towing cars from long stay car parks. The first period of up to 90 days has the airport contacting the owners and only then when the license disc/road tax has expired is it towed and disposed of. Common sense is being used and this is only a problem in South Africa it seems lol.