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Cape Town International Airport’s Parking Fiasco

Ian McLaren By:
Wednesday, February 8th, 2012 11:43 am GMT +2

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Congratulations to Cape Town on being announced as the Best Destination in the World by the popular travel site Trip Advisor. A worthy accolade for a beautiful city that offers visitors the best of all worlds, from immaculate beaches, stunning mountain views, tasty wine routes, and fine dining. How is it then that the officials and planners at the supposedly world-class Cape Town International Airport make it so difficult to welcome visitors to this city?

Prior to its 2010 Soccer World Cup upgrade, the airport was criticised for being a tad too small and impractical to service such a burgeoning tourist destination. Of particular concern was the lack of available parking, especially for those that needed to leave their cars at the airport while traveling locally for business. Indeed, it became almost common sight to see vehicles all-but abandoned on pavements and across solid red lines as desperate passengers made the decision to make their flights and pay any potential parking fines later. One thing that did work pretty efficiently at the “old” airport, however, was the stop and drop area. Granted it wasn’t nearly large enough so got a little tight during peak times, but there seemed to be a general understanding that, as long as you didn’t leave your vehicle at any point, you were allowed to wait for a reasonable amount of time for your arriving passengers to collect their luggage, shake hands or exchange a kiss, and head off towards the N2. Simple. Without too much fuss this same area was used to seamlessly drop departing passengers off, without even switching ones engine off.

So, now that the Cape Town International Airport has more than enough parking and a swanky new, ramped up, drop off area, you would think that the collection of friends, relatives, and guests would be even more convenient than ever before. In fact, this is one of the features advertised on the ACSA website using statements like “changes have been implemented to create service improvements” and to “improve convenience”.

Essentially, this new system no longer allows you to simply collect a waiting passenger from outside of the airport building. This wide-open area, with its 80-odd parking bays, is strictly for departing passengers only. In order to fetch a passenger you are instructed to drive into the parkade (already inconvenient), take a parking ticket that allows you an “ample” 30 minutes free parking, find an allocated bay, leave your car, walk to the airport lobby, find your passenger, shake their hand or kiss their cheek, walk back to the parkade, find your car, load the luggage, and find the exit. Be warned though, there a heavy fee (R35 per hour) is payable should you not be able to complete this task within the “ample” 30 minute time allocation. Further convenience is provided by an up-to-date flight information schedule IN THE AIRPORT LOBBY. This means that by the time you find out that your passenger’s flight is delayed you are already parked with the clock ticking on your 30 minutes…

Should you choose to shun this new and very convenient collection system, or simply not want your wife or loved-one to have to walk through the airport car park to find you, you are welcome to take your chances and wait at one of the many empty bays at the departures drop off area. Here you will instantly be greeted by one of more than ten extremely efficient officials who will inform you that, despite there being no other cars around (and likely no more departing flights for the evening) that you should rather waste petrol and patience by enjoying the conveniently provided circular driving route for as many loops as it takes for your arriving guest to be standing outside the airport doors. As a note, there are freshly painted signs around helping you actually find your way back to this zone (it’s a long run back to the N2 should you miss it).

How is this convenient? Surely with the benefit of some foresight and planning ACSA would have figured that, like most efficiently run terminals around the world, the majority of domestic passengers simply require a quick drop-off, and collection point, outside of the building so that they can carry on with their day with the least inconvenience to both themselves and the person collecting them?

Cape Town may be the Best Destination in the World, but it certainly isn’t the best place in which to arrive!


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PLEASE NOTE: The opinion expressed in this article is the author's own and publication does not mean it is endorsed by the CAR magazine editorial staff or RamsayMedia, publishers of CAR magazine.
  • AB

    Hi,

    A few observations from someone who works at the airport overlooking the road network.

    1) If you want a traffic fine, stop and wait in the left lane heading over the bridge just before the road splits to go to drop & go, pick up, parkades and car rental returns. There is a red line and no stopping signs, people and uncle traffic cop in his old Hyundai Elantra traffic cop car will get you!

    2) The drop & go area (up the ramp and under the V-shaped roof) is being used for drop offs and collections, with the result it gets pretty busy at certain times and people to the most amazing things, like park you (and 2 of your neighbours) in, swing wildly in and out over the 3 lanes behind the parking bays, etc. Those traffic cops there are very quick to chase you away…if you don’t want to listen you end up with a clamped wheel and a releasing fine.

    3) Make very sure that you enter by the Pick Up entrance to the 1st Parking garage, where you stay on ground level. Check the time stamp on your ticket vs the time on your watch/cell phone. If you take the 2nd entrance to the 1st Parking garage and go up a ramp, you will end up paying from the moment you got your parking ticket. If you end up at the 2nd parkade (past the V-shaped building) you are going to pay no matter where in the parkade you park.

    4) And finally, people if you made a mistake, don’t start reversing or drive over pavements, through gardens, etc. All the roads at the airport go around (in one direction only please – clockwise, sometimes people forget that) and if you want to get out of the airport you follow the N2 signs and stay in the middle lanes by the BP. If you want to go back to the airport follow the right hand lane just before you get to the BP, go around a mini-roundabout halfway, hugging the Standard Bank water tower on your immediate right and you are back with all 3 lanes and choices of where to go at the airport in front of you.

    We hear plenty of tyres screeching and plenty of hooting. And we have seen some eye poppingly bad driving maneuvers too!

  • Ewald Germishuys

    Ian is raising a point which I have been burning to comment on. I can’t agree more and to emphasize this frustration my wife dropped me off at the airport and decided to come in with me. We had a quick breakfast together before I left. When she returned to her car she was greeted with a R80 parking bill. Not having this kind of cash on her she virtually had to beg the parking officials to let her out but they were not prepared to come to any kind of agreement and not until an hour later and her being in tears did they let her out still having to pay the odd R50 cash she had with her. Needless to say I am furiously disgusted by this.

    One thing Ian didn’t mention is that if you drive anything that is larger than a normal size sedan you will find it very difficult to exit the parking lot without driving over the sidewalk as the bending exit lanes are extremely narrow. For a world class newly designed building this makes no sense at all especially as the surrounding parking bays are ALWAYS empty making you wonder why they were so pressed for space.

    To me the 30min free parking is an well planned money making scheme. Having to pick up people from the airport all the time I know it takes 20-25 minutes to park Close, get out, walk to where the passengers come out, quickly greed, walk back, load luggage and then race to get out. If you have to wait 5 minutes extra for them to get their luggage or go to the toilet you pay pay pay.

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