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Leaving your car parked at the airport might seem like a safe bet, but it seems the doughnut ring of crime that encircles OR Tambo Airport just got a cheeky filling.

An employee of Rainbow Parking, a company offering long-term parking at OR Tambo airport, has been busted taking a woman’s car on 27 lekker joyrides during the four days the vehicle was parked there – all thanks to dashcam footage.

Some of the trips included taking his girlfriend to work and late-night trips to KFC.

Walters, a 36-year-old digital strategist, showed News24 the tracker report, which detailed the trips from 4 December, when she dropped off her car, to 8 December, when she collected it.

“When picking up my car, I opened my boot and saw flour all over the place. This most certainly wasn’t there when I dropped the car off.”

She later watched the dashcam footage as well and was astounded to see the employee driving his girlfriend to work in her car while chatting about their vacation plans. The footage even showed the cheeky joyrider trying to heckle money from some unidentified guy at a house he visited with the car.

This was on top of the late-night munchies run where the oke popped out in her car for a Streetwise 2 at KFC.

“I was in utter disbelief. I can’t believe that someone would do something like that. There were so many other fancy big cars [at the car park], and I think he took mine because he thought it was a small, cheap car so he would be safe.”

“Seeing how he drove – he didn’t wear a seatbelt, didn’t use the indicators – the mess he made, and the potential for catastrophe has me thinking that [Rainbow Parking] really can’t get away with this.”

After taking the damning evidence to the parking company, she was accused of lying, but the dashcam footage and tracker report would suggest that Rainbow Parking had been caught with their fingers in the ignition. Walters now wants answers over this nonsense, from both the dodgy parking company, as well as OR Tambo who are supposed to vet the people operating at the airport.

“To add insult, my car phone charger was taken, and my gum container emptied.”

The owner of Rainbow Parking, Leon Alumbi, told News24 he had received Walter’s complaint and that disciplinary proceedings were underway against the employee, although no apology has been made thus far.

Walters is now rightfully claiming a valet service for her vehicle, a refund of the R500 tariff she had paid for parking and payment for the kilometres clocked by the employee. She also wants ‘AA rates of R3.77 per km for 119km driven, plus 25%.’

I’d ask for a KFC bucket as well.

It would be surprising if this is the first time a traveller’s car has been taken for a joyride, so if you have left you’re vehicle overnight at one of our airports, we suggest you look into it ASAP.

ACSA might also want to consider getting their sh*t together.