Dear Alex,
I have a problem with South African Airways (SAA) – it treats its passengers from airports other than Johannesburg as if they don’t deserve its business. When I departed Cape Town for London in May, I was shocked to see an ancient B747 being used. The plane was so old it had no AVOD [audio-video on-demand] and there were no seat-back monitors. For entertainment, each cabin had two Stone Age monitors hanging from the ceiling.
Because of this, most people were bored to tears. Nobody could watch the single film playing on repeat so people chatted and walked listlessly up and down the aisles. Those who wanted to sleep simply couldn’t do so.
By contrast, all SAA flights leaving Johannesburg for London use new Airbuses. I realise SAA is not a big player on the world stage, but for us people living in Cape Town, it is a snub by our government-owned airline. Do you agree?
Sang Fung, Cape Town
Alex replies:
You must have been unlucky because SAA normally schedules an A340 for this route. Maybe a technical glitch on the day of travel meant it had to switch plane types.
Unfortunately, it is a fact of life that national airlines neglect cities away from their main hubs. They prefer to scoop up their passengers from what they term “secondary” destinations and consolidate them at a hub before flying them overseas.
Look at how few short- or long-haul international services Air France operates from Lyon or Nice compared with Paris. Likewise, Lufthansa from Hamburg, Berlin and Stuttgart compared with Frankfurt and Munich, or SAS from Copenhagen as against Gothenburg, Oslo and Stockholm.
But at least these cities, along with Cape Town, are better off than the UK. Our national airline, British Airways, does not operate a single international service from any UK city other than London.
