Emerging South

The last years I have had an ever growing despise of having to fly South African Airways.  The airline's evolution has many parallels with the evolution of South Africa as a country:
1. An sudden increase of black management. The "positive discrimination" of blacks caused a current number of 240 technician vacancies and 53 pilots vacancies.  217 technicians resigned last year; you can imagine what the quality is of the ones left.
2.The losses of Souh African's airlines totalled 13,7 billion South African Rand between 2002 and now.  That is more than 1 billion EU !  Meanwhile, the salary of Khaya Ngquala climbed from 2,3 million SAR in 2004 to 5 million SAR today.  In 2005-2006 he also received a performance bonus of 1,85 million SAR; god may know why.  Seriously, just look at the man who is running SA; I wonder if anyone would actually understand his English.  Meanwhile, the(AN) ministers have no considerations whatsoever replacing Ngquala.
3. SAA is government supported; since 2004 SAA absorbed 12 billion SAR in government support; 9 billion SAR in cash injections and 2,86 billion SAR in guarantees.

The worst however is the absolute despise of the (black) personnel of SAA towards their customers.  On our last flight from Johannesburg to Brussels (where we had a 1h45min stopover in Munich, more than enough time); the person at checkin refused to board us also on the Munich to Brussels flight; which is standard procedure.  While at the checkin counter in Joburg, we looked to the board of the flights leaving and we saw that the flight was leaving one hour later then mentioned on the tickets. We asked the guy at checkin and he said it was probably just a flaw of the board.  We of course knew that the flight would leave at least 1 hour late and that therefore they couldn't boardus into the Munich-Brussels flight (systems don't allow when stop-over flight leaves less then 1h after the scheduled arrivalof the flight from Joburg).  We went to a black supervisor.  A typical Johannesburg black woman, who could barely speak decent English and probably was recently promoted from cleaning lady to checkin supervisor.  The conversation with that woman was hilarious.  Just us being white she was already in the defensive and stating; never did it cross her mind that we were actually customers and that our satisfaction was her job.  She never admitted the plane would leave late, she even had the announcement board changed to the original departure hour.  We didn't get our boarding passes for Munich, but the plane in Joburg did leave 1,5 hours late (we had to wait  after they allowed us in the plane).  Luckily in Munich, the efficient, friendly, well-trained and smiling Lufthansa people helped sorting everything and brought us quickly to Brussels.  When we mentioned our troubles with South African Airlines, they smiled and said "we are used to it".  If you think Lufthansa will ever even consider taking over SAA: keep dreaming.

And I'm certainly not the only one with these horros stories.  Actually, the situation is getting that bad that South Africans are opening complaint sites.  Recently "SAA sucks" has been opened.  The site is setup by a well-known SA journalist and is getting massive support. 

Also good news: my favorite South African national carrier is now 1time.  They are competitively priced; very spatious,always on time, withfriendly, well-trained staf.  Contrary to SAA, 1time is not subsidized by the SA government, so they do know what customer satisfaction means.  Also good news is that 1time won bigtime in the hedging camble ! Just like Ryanair they decided not to hedge when oil was at 100 US$, which means they... won.

The flight from Europe to SA I now always book at Lufthansa or Swiss.

To my big frustration, I'm still bound to South African Airways flying from Africa to Brazil on the Joburg-Sao Paulo flight.  Truly hope that also here there will soon be a worthy alternative.