My South African Airways horror story
Last week Tuesday I arrived in Lilongwe, Malawi from New York via Johannesburg. After clearing through immigration, I stood at the baggage claim and after 45 minutes, 75% of the people on the flight were still hanging around. I found out that to conserve fuel, SAA purposely decided to leave most of the luggage behind in Johannesburg. I then waited on line for over an hour to fill out my claim form and get out of the airport.
On Friday, I finally called the airline to find out what was going on, and then said my bags had arrived. So I went to pick them up. While the customs inspectors were inspecting my bags, I inspected them as well. As it turned out, there were a number of things missing from my bag, the handle on the bag had been broken off, and the wheels were all messed up. The amount of pilfered items added up to about $125 USD (~ 1000 Rand). I filled out a form at the airport and they also sent me down the SAA office in downtown Lilongwe to file a report there. The SAA employee informed me it would be *3 months* before I would find out the status of my claim!
John, New Jersey, USA
Tags: Complaints, SAA
December 18th, 2009 at 8:54 pm
My advice: Never fly SAA again and make sure you warn every one of your friends not to fly it, and while you are at it, tell them to tell their friends and so on and so forth. Word of mouth is still the most effective form of anti-marketing.
January 9th, 2010 at 1:13 pm
South African Airways: RULES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
January 9th, 2010 at 1:16 pm
Ok, look, that is the biggest lie i have ever read in my whole life if u really want something like that to happen go fly with Delta or United Airlines
January 9th, 2010 at 1:22 pm
and if that did happen would you be prepared to pay for all the extra feul!!!!!!