Arrival in South Africa
Our 11 hour flight from Perth to Jo'Burg only took ten hours and SAA was as comfortable as a flying toothpaste tube can be. SAA don't have an equivalent to BA Club or Business so we get to travel First Class. Yes the food was OK, yes the the entertainment system was as good as these things get, yes the seats performed all manner or power-operated tricks and somersaults and yeas they went flat into what might have passed for beds. However, the designer may have misunderstood his brief or misunderstood the words 'soft' and 'flat'.
For 'flat' he clearly read horizontal and it was indeed possible to place the seats/beds in a horizontal position. As for the idea that when in this position, these passed for beds in which one might get some sleep, well they fell a long way short of the mark. Were the Americans to adopt these rock hard and rather lumpy SAA First Class sleeper seats for use in interrogations where sleep deprivation was the intention, I suspect they would have more than a little success!
As we sit in the BA Club lounge watching dawn come up, waiting for our connecting flight to Cape Town we can only hope that Comair will be better....yeah right!
The only source of amusement as we arrived at O R Tambo International Airport was watching the white supervisor yelling at the presumably black baggage loaders through the rubber curtain at the Baggage Claim carousel to get off their arses, stop drinking and get the bags out to the passengers. Eventually, one at a time at a very slow pace they began to emerge. 'Stop drinking and give her some help' was the next barked order. This almost but not quite doubled the rate at which the bags appeared. Fortunately, our baggage had priority labels, so it appeared relatively early on. I suspect some economy passengers will still be there tomorrow!
For 'flat' he clearly read horizontal and it was indeed possible to place the seats/beds in a horizontal position. As for the idea that when in this position, these passed for beds in which one might get some sleep, well they fell a long way short of the mark. Were the Americans to adopt these rock hard and rather lumpy SAA First Class sleeper seats for use in interrogations where sleep deprivation was the intention, I suspect they would have more than a little success!
As we sit in the BA Club lounge watching dawn come up, waiting for our connecting flight to Cape Town we can only hope that Comair will be better....yeah right!
The only source of amusement as we arrived at O R Tambo International Airport was watching the white supervisor yelling at the presumably black baggage loaders through the rubber curtain at the Baggage Claim carousel to get off their arses, stop drinking and get the bags out to the passengers. Eventually, one at a time at a very slow pace they began to emerge. 'Stop drinking and give her some help' was the next barked order. This almost but not quite doubled the rate at which the bags appeared. Fortunately, our baggage had priority labels, so it appeared relatively early on. I suspect some economy passengers will still be there tomorrow!
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