It’s Luke’s birthday in November and as a special birthday gift Colette and I have decided to fly his grandfather and my sister (his aunt) down from Jo’burg to spend some time with him over this time. We figured that he could use a little familiarity what with us relocating to Cape Town so today I set off to book two plane tickets online.

My first choice would have been British Airways (R4,000) but they seemed way too expensive and I couldn’t see much difference between Mango (R3,100), Kulula (R3,200) or SAA (R3,477) so I decided to opt for an airline that was trusted to arrive on time and booked my two tickets with SAA. (more…)

I had to get to JHB from EL whilst on holiday quite urgently and made an online booking for a same day return flight on SAA but made a stupid mistake and instead of booking for the 28th March, I booked for the 28th April – I attempted to call reservations and after holding on for over half an hour, only to be told that I could not change the flight – my comment to the “lovely” lady was ” so what are my options – can I use this another time or is this just a complete waste of money (R1350) ?” – she duly tells me that there is nothing I can do and do not have any options – yeah right !

I have tried to phone a few more times to see if they could just change the name on the ticket, but am still holding for reservations to pick up since the 14th April – This is the second time this has happened to me with SAA in the last 4 mnths – can’t change a booking without breaking the bank. Incidently, the cost to change the reservation would have been over R2,000 – I booked a whole new flight on 1time for R1385. SAA did have seats availabe at special rates ! I checked ! As for the R200 admin fee they charge – hmph !!! They are a rip off and their client services stinks !! Oh – I can go on …