Steven Friedman
‘You should call it,” my colleague suggested, “when every day is not our day.” We were seated on an SAA plane on the runway at Heathrow, where we were to wait for an hour because the flight arrived late and our parking bay had been given away. The pilot had just observed that it was “unfortunately not our day”.
The suggestion that inconvenience was unusual probably worked with most passengers, who fly seldom enough to write off the incident to bad luck. But, as a seasoned traveller on other people’s money, I knew that the week before was not our day either. Or the week before that.
We live in an age of airline deregulation. In keeping with the mood of the times, our national carrier has an improved website, more bonus schemes and souped-up public relations. The only thing it lacks is an ability to get people to destinations on time.
In the last few months I have travelled abroad six times on other llllll people’s money, each time onl SAA. Not one flight left orlll arrived on time. This was invariably explained as an unfortunate departure from the norm.
The stress of waiting on runways and possibly missing connections was not relieved by having to listen to pilots use chat as a diversionary tactic. Most offer travelogues or bromides, such as “there will be a delay of a few minutes” in lay language, an hour or two or “thank you for your patience”. (Thanks for not committing a violent act when we ignore your complaint?) But one yahoo excelled himself by telling us what he did in New York during his stop-overs (nothing any of us with horizons stretching beyond suburban Brakpan would do).
But the baroque explanations for delays makes it all almost worthwhile. One flight to New York left late because the pilot felt “the carpets were damp”. Another because, having parked the plane halfway to Witbank (lest you feel welcome on board), the crew had forgotten to assist a disabled passenger.
Another source of fun is finding the deliberate mistake in SAA flight times. On one trip from Heathrow, I added the announced flying time to our advertised departure: if we left on schedule, we would arrive seven minutes late! The exercise was, of course, hypothetical; we did not leave on time.
So why do I fly SAA? Because last year I was persuaded that it was OK to claim frequent flyer miles on other people’s money. I joined SAA’s Voyager programme convinced that my orgy of travel would win me a free trip to Kimberley.
This turned out to be as naive as my pathetic belief that airlines should arrive on time. First, SAA lost the address on my application. Then they sent me a silver card telling me I am allowed into airport lounges (which would be a boon if it was not for the quaint SAA habit of insisting that you board the airport bus before lldelays are announced). My exalted status does not, however, extend to being told how many miles I have logged more often than every six months, or having questions answered in less than a week (SAA did answer my query about collecting my ticket to Mumbai only days after my return).
So does all this mean that John Matshikiza was wrong last week to describe SAA as world class? Not at all. My brush with other airlines suggests that it may be no worse than the norm. If Matshikiza finds Air Afrique a problem, he should try Delta Air’s partner carrier from Kennedy airport, New York, to Washington. The plane resembled a World War II troop carrier hand baggage could not be taken on board because there was no stowage. The “hostess” asked two passengers to move back in the almost empty aircraft “so we can balance in the air”. It did, in fairness, manage to get me to Washington but not my baggage. Later I told American friends that my bags were lost at Kennedy. “Isn’t everyone’s?” they replied.
Other encounters with air travel in the United States were not much different. Once we were delayed five hours because of “a snow storm in Boston”. Fair enough if several of us had not called family there to find that the “storm” was a flurry several hours before.
No chaos can, however, compete with the world’s last superpower trying to manage air travel during snow. They may be capable of bombing Grenada into the stone age, but when snow falls, take a train. Delta, SAA’s US partner, turned in a recent five-star performance that saw this veteran voyager take 41 hours to return home. The adventure included an insight into national characters the Americans respond to air disruptions by misleading you into believing all is well; the French, by contrast, never tell a lie because they are too contemptuous to tell anything.
It included a memorable time at Charles de Gaulle airport, Paris, where the departure lounge resembled a pinball table as lights twinkled myriad “delayed” signs. (I was lucky to be booked on the 7.30 to London it left well before the 6.30.)
The conclusion seems obvious. SAA’s blithe disregard of passengers’ needs is not inefficiency: it is part of our national obsession to fit in with world trends.
There is little doubt in this jaded journeyer’s mind that air travel has moved backwards, throughout the world. A key reason may be deregulation that has resulted in far too many airlines and flights for any airport to manage and, in the US, has freed airlines of the need to do anything that will add to passenger convenience or comfort if that increases costs. If so, airlines may be a unique case in which freeing up rules has hit the affluent rather than the poor.
Is this really the reason? I don’t know. But I expect to have time to ponder the question on a runway in an SAA plane.