SAA & ACSA you have a problem!

I am sitting in the business class lounge as I post this.  My 6:20am flight has been cancelled due to “technical” reasons.  I have no issue with this as I would prefer to fly on a plane free of any technical problems.

My issue is with how this is being communicated to the clients.  At 6:12am the television still shows the flight as if it were going to depart. I arrived at the check in counter and was told that their was an issue with the flight and the soonest flight that I could get onto was the 7:30am as other passengers had connecting flights.

The airport is absolute pandemonium, with a queue to pass through security longer than the check in queue.  I know that this is not SAA’s problem as the airport is run by ACSA. The airport is apparently flooded at one entrance, this seems crazy!

This have all gone down at 5:30 am (I had been at the airport since 5:00am) so I suppose you could put some of this post down to sleep deprivation but never-the-less. We have only 700 odd days to 2010 and we need to ensure that we can handle the passenger volume. I support with the bid but this morning left me a little shaken.

Staff are critical to all of this, the security personnel were rude and one family just about missed their flight as they had to cut the line to get through security. The other passengers in the line were fine with this, but the guy “swiping” your boarding pass seemed to think that the family had to wait. It took all of the over passengers, some 60 people to push this family to the front in order for them to make it.

Training has let you down here. Surely if you can see that the rest of the passengers are fine with them cutting the queue, then you let them by?

Keeping your passengers happy is critical, here’s hoping that SAA and ACSA can upgrade their levels of customer service, so that we can portray the friendly face that we are as South Africans.