How Canadian airports deal with abandoned cars

[Airport parking manager Brett Bain says there are many reasons why people have dumped or forgotten vehicles at the airport. Parking staff at the Edmonton International Airport counted roughly 120 abandoned cars and trucks last year. THE CANADIAN PRESS]

If you’ve rushed to find a parking spot at the airport only to find several clunkers that have obviously not been touched for weeks or even months taking up spots, you’re not alone.

It’s not an uncommon sight at some airports to find them covered in dust or snow sitting in parking spaces, sometimes for months at a time. Some may have flat tires or some may even be missing licence plates, but each year dozens of vehicles are left abandoned at Canadian airports.

Edmonton International Airport has seen 120 alone last year, which some believe may be in part due to oil industry workers from out of province heading back home after losing their jobs, and perhaps part of the reason so many abandoned cars have piled up there is because of the steps the airport needs to take to get rid of the abandoned vehicles.

“The problem we have in Alberta is in order to declare a vehicle abandoned, you need to notify the registered owner by mail. We don’t have access to get those records — the police do,” Brett Bain, Edmonton International parking and ground transportation manager, told Yahoo News Canada.

Because of the Privacy Act, the police can’t share the owner’s information with the airport, but they do help in other ways when they can. With the help of the RCMP, Edmonton International has been able to get rid of nearly all of the 120 vehicles that have been taking up parking spaces.

Toronto Pearson International Airport, Canada’s largest airport, sees about 40 to 50 abandoned cars a year, a relatively small number compared to Edmonton, and Pearson officials believe the reason they have fewer abandoned vehicles may be partly due to their streamlined process of identifying and disposing of cars they believe have been abandoned.

“We get rid of them right away,” Pearson spokeswoman Siobhan Desroches said. “Once it gets to a point where we identify that it has been here for an extended period of time — within a period of a month — if we can’t get in contact with [the owner], it’s out.”

Part of Pearson’s streamlined efforts to deal with abandoned vehicles includes attempts to reach out to owners and working with local police to determine if any of the abandoned vehicles are vehicles of interest. Once the owner of a vehicle can’t be located, a towing company takes the abandoned car off the airport’s hands.

Pearson says it carries out checks at least every month and it has gotten so good at detecting and removing abandoned cars that at any given time there may be no abandoned vehicles in Pearson parking lots.

“There’s no way a car would slip by for a couple months,” Desroches said.

Pearson and Edmonton International are far from the only airports that have seen abandoned cars. Australia’s Perth Airport has seen at least 61 vehicles abandoned last year up from 40 the year before. Brisbane Airport got 78 abandoned cars in 2015 down from the 84 in 2014.

In both Perth and Brisbane, backpackers are believed to be the ones leaving behind their vehicles at airports. Logan International Airport in Boston held an auction last October to offload the 95 abandoned cars it’s collected since 2009. That all pales in comparison to the thousands of luxury cars left behind at the Dubai International Airport by those leaving the country to escape harsh laws against debtors.

Here at home, however, abandoned cars in airport parking lots may be a rare sight at smaller airports.

A spokeswoman for Winnipeg’s international airport said it sees as few as five abandoned vehicles a year, and Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, Toronto’s island airport, said it hasn’t had any instances of abandoned vehicles dating back to 2013. That may be due to the airport’s size and that 37 per cent of its passengers walk, bike or take public transit to access the airport.

The Halifax international airport said it sees three abandoned vehicles a year with only six currently in its parking lots.

“We keep a daily inventory of the cars parked here, and after a vehicle has been parked here for 90 days, it begins to get our attention,” Ashley Gallant, Halifax International Airport Authority spokeswoman, said in an email. “We then contact the RCMP for any information they can provide on the vehicle, then we’ll try to contact the owners to see if they plan to return.”

Unlike Pearson, however, Halifax has auctioned off their vehicles in a number of cases. For other airports, like Pearson and Edmonton International, the towing company can choose to do several things with the vehicles, which may include selling them.

While it may be a mystery why some cars are left behind at airports, that hasn’t stopped some from speculating. Some believe some vehicle owners have left the country without any plans of returning or other owners may have died while on vacation. Sometimes the parking fees may be more than what the car is worth, and some people choose to leave their cars at the airport.

But there is a silver lining for those who abandoned their vehicles and are having second thoughts, some airports have said they’re willing to reunite abandoned cars with their owners and may even wave the large parking fees they may have accumulated.

“There’s a variety of reasons why these instances occur,” Desroches says. “[Pearson airport assesses] them on a case-by-case basis.”