South African Airways

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South African Airways Reviews

August 11, 2008

Bad service

We were booked on the SAA 424 flight from Port Elizabeth to Johannesburg then on KLM 592 to Amsterdam and Aer Lingus 605 to Dublin.

The thing that wrecked the end of our holiday was the disappearance of our bags. We made the mistake of putting our bags straight through to Dublin rather than take them off in Johannesburg to put them on the KLM flight to Amsterdam ourselves.

One of the bags turned up a week and a half later with things stolen out of it and clothes it it that were not ours and the other one is still lost 2 and a half weeks later as I am writing this. At no point in time was the last carrier, which is made responsible, able to tell us where our bags were. In fact what irony that the system they swear by is the one that had the lady from baggage saying both our bags were still listed as missing and location unknown when the Aer Lingus van turned up outside our house with the first bag.

Three days ago was 2 weeks since we landed and three days after the first bag turned up. I had written to my father, who lives in Pretoria, asking him if he would go to JHB to look for the bag that was still missing and untraceable. It took him 10 minutes to find the bag there amongst of a flood of other bags condemned to the same fate as mine was. It had been opened, things had been stolen, the name tag had been ripped off as well as the label bearing the flights it was supposed to be on, gone. He then proceeded to get the bag put on the next KLM flight to Amsterdam. It has now been 3 days since then and Aer Lingus is still incapable of telling me where my bag is with their system that Ãï¿½Â¢Ã¯Â¿Â½Ã¯Â¿Â½worksÃï¿½Â¢Ã¯Â¿Â½Ã¯Â¿Â½.

Special thanks would go first and foremost to the South African baggage handlers who helped themselves to Christmas presents in people's bags and then leave the bags to rot. Secondly I would also love to thank the South African airways managers for not having these criminals put in jail never mind fired. And then also special thanks goes out to the airport authorities all over the world, KLM and Aer Lingus in this case, that are incapable of enforcing some kind of retrieval operation when they clearly know where the bags went missing and why.

What I would recommend for anyone flying to South Africa:

1)If you can avoid JHB and fly to CT, do it.

2)If you have to fly through JHB, make sure to take your bag off the flight you are on and see to it personally that it goes on the next flight.

3)If you can survive with a large hand luggage do it even if it means posting stuff yourself you buy on holiday.

4)Attach a name tag containing your phone number with international prefix to your bag that is very difficult to remove.

5)When the person at check-in puts the label on your bag make sure it goes on in such a way that would not be ripped open if someone were to search through your bag for valuables.

6)Don't trust anyone when they say that are doing everything possible to get your bag back because they are doing nothing other than waiting for it to turn up.

March 13, 2008

Incompetence!

I'm not sure whether writing this letter will have any effect in improving the service of SAA or maybe just relieve myself of bundled agitation of dealing with continuous incompetence of bumbling idiots as found in SAA mainly ground staff I may add.

Knowing how busy domestic departures gets at OR Tambo I purposely was there 2.5 hours ahead of flight departure Sunday 9th March, to be found in a manageable queue of about 25 people. This was soon dispelled as going to be smooth, as there was of course 1 individual manning a check-in counter for this queue and he was taking on average anything from 10-15 mins booking in a person, amongst chatting to his friends with no sense of urgency. This combined with individuals who just pushed in from the side of the queue allowed people who have been waiting for 1.5 hrs only to get more and more angry. To top it all the pretty dolled up SAA ladies strutted around as if they were God's gift to someone (definitely not SAA customers) and eventually one of them decided to open up another check-in only to serve 1 customer and then take a friendly telephone call and disappear now leaving a queue in excess of probably 150 people seething in anger. Of course SAA will never have any form of communication in the form of an announcement or a manager manning his staff, talking to customers (probably too terrified they will get killed for being incompetent) just to let us know what was going on. I thought the cherry on the cake must have been when one of the computer terminals started bellowing out smoke only to be told by a client that it was burning whom they thought was shouting at them for service and ignored him till he really raised his voice in concern for the developing fire which was then approached in a circus like panic. Trying to tell them to just switch off the computer which would kill power to the item fell on deaf ears. So a lot of bellowing clouds of dry powder from extinguishers later it was doused.

Only after I had to threaten death to one of the "managers" of SAA (who only came into view with the fire) to open up another terminal was such that he said quote "I didn't realize there was only one person" assisting the ever growing queue which by this time was almost in the car park I'm sure... Well to cut a long story short (this could go on for ever & ever), I had my ticket and off to the gate only to wait there till almost boarding time to then be told to board through another gate and then have your flight delayed by almost an hour, REALLY was the cherry on top and of course zero communication from SAA in this regard is always relevant.

We won't even talk about the food on SAA planes, fish or beef... I think those of you whom have flown will know what I'm talking about, as the food goes quite well together with SAA service as one putrid experience! Experiences of SAA of this nature are now more common place than not and seem to happen almost every time I fly and I do fly once a month every month. I just hope this rot does not cascade into the maintenance section of SAA as we will be in for some scary flights.

Mr W. van der Merwe
Seriously happy SAA Customer... NOT!