‘Rude SAA’ doesn’t fly with family

SAA Cargo has been engaging with the Department of Environmental Affairs on the issue. PICTURE: Leon Nicholas

SAA Cargo has been engaging with the Department of Environmental Affairs on the issue. PICTURE: Leon Nicholas

Published May 25, 2015

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Cape Town - A family returning to London after a summer holiday in Cape Town found that South African Airways (SAA) had double-sold their six seats on their connecting flight to Johannesburg.

Five hours later, the Loxton family were still waiting at the airport in Cape Town to get on to another flight to Johannesburg, but by the time they arrived in Johannesburg they had missed their international flight to the UK.

And SAA’s response is that the double-selling of seats is a “standard business practice” adopted by most global airlines.

Sara Loxton, from Bath, took a dim view of the practice.

“On arrival in Joburg, SAA then denied all responsibility because we were not flying with them to London.

“We were pushed from person to person, with each one desperate to get rid of us and go home,” Loxton said.

Finally they were told by “a rude SAA manager” that there were no flights to London for over a week.

The next morning the family tried again to get a flight on SAA, but the ticket office was closed. All other airlines had no flights available for days.

Eventually they were able to buy tickets from Virgin UK, which cost R103 300.

Although they received some compensation from SAA, Loxton said this was less than the cost of their original internal flights.

“This policy of deliberately overselling seats is profiteering,” Loxton said.

“Why is SAA allowed to get away with selling a seat twice? To have done so at peak holiday return season shows a callous disregard for customers. SAA’s greed and disorganisation has cost us time, anxiety and a huge amount of money,” she said.

SAA spokesperson Tlali Tlali confirmed that the Loxtons could not board the Cape Town to Johannesburg flight because it was overbooked.

He said because of bad weather the Loxtons had not been able to get another flight to Johannesburg and so had missed their international flight.

Because the Loxtons were not travelling on SAA for the international flight as well as the internal flight, the system “could not detect” that they had an international flight to catch with another airline, Tlali said.

“Flight overbooking is a standard business practice applied by most global airlines,” he said.

The purpose of double-selling seats was to “allow customers to enjoy lower airfares, as price is not used to offset revenue loss from ‘spoilt seats’ “, Tlali said.

When seats were double-sold, SAA called for volunteers to change their flights. If there were no volunteers, passengers were given compensation, but in the Loxtons’ case this was less than they had paid for their original seats.

“SAA has resolved to make contact with them to register its apology for the inconvenience and to present an offer to them,” Tlali said.

Cape Times

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