SAA experience

[Glenn L]

copy of my letter to SAA

Dear Sir / Madam

I would like to give you some feedback re my return flight from Joburg to Perth.
Departing 6 March 2014. Return 24th March 2014.

I flew (both legs) as passenger on A340-600 - ZS-SNC

I want to commend both sets of cabin crew for excellent and attentive service. I found every one of them to be friendly and helpful. Meals were also quite tasty and toilets were clean and neat. The cabin was also neat and clean.

The disappointment was that my entertainment system was not working on both the outbound and return flight. Fortunately the flight to Perth was not fully booked and I was able to move to another seat (from 62K to 65K). The move, however, introduced me to another irritation which was a periodic “drilling” noise coming from under the floor. The cabin attendant even called one of the flight crew to check it out, but he was not sure of the problem other than assuring us that it was not a critical issue because no warnings had come up in the flight deck. So I had moved to a seat with an entertainment system but had to endure the “drilling” noise periodically all through the flight.

On the return flight (seat 58D) the entertainment system again failed to work. The friendly and apologetic cabin staff did offer to find me another seat (after trying unsuccessfully to reset the system) but by then I was very tired and decided to just settle in for a night’s rest.

Overall these might be viewed as minor complaints, but the little irritations can be the decision maker when looking to book another flight.

Many thanks for your attention to this letter.

Yours

Glenn Lyons

Prth Jhb A346 ZS-SNC.jpg

[TheMaN]

i have flown 2 return European trips with saa in the last year, and out of the 4 legs, the entertainment system worked once....

first time i wrote a complaint letter and only got a vague/standard apology 7 months after the first occurrence...

[Dan]

That's why they my last resort,,,

[Glenn L]

thanks for comments.
Its been disappointing to discover that a few other friends have had similar experiences on international SAA flights.
last year i flew Qantas to Sydney and, from where i sat, everyone's systems were in good working order on both legs (and their 747-400s are older than SAA's A340-600s).

[AC6T]

Ill post my comments in July.

6T

[Swampdonkey]

I'm not the type to complain, but if I did wish to complain, then I will complain. As it is right now, I have nothing to complain about so I shall refrain from complaining.

[emilemyburgh]

At least, when you switch off the screen on SAA (assuming it works), it stays off. On Lufthansa's A380 people carrier, it switches itself on all the time making it difficult to sleep. Nevertheless, I like SAA because of their legroom, which is spacier than many other airlines.

[brandsman]

Agreed on the leg room. I flew SAA cattle class to Hong Kong in December 2012 and it was great - everything worked on the A-340-600. It is a bit scary when one hears of entertainment systems not working and strange noises because it points at poor maintenance: if they can't keep the entertainment working properly, what is going on elsewhere? How many other snags are not fixed? Funny, one would think that it would be the task of one or ten of their many hundreds of managers to keep on top of these things!

[Glenn L]

Legroom - definitely better than Qantas.
Got a nice and clearly personal reply from SAA yesterday. Maybe they will pay some attention to the IFE systems? Let me know . . .