SA Express - A SOB Story

This was originally published at the end of  March 2018, shortly before SA Express was grounded for serious breaches of SACAA safety regulations - see end of article for a summary of what did happen to SA Express.

This is the story of my most recent experience of travelling with SA Express. It is followed by a brief analysis of the issues the airline is facing and what could be done to improve matters.

Wednesday March 14. I am travelling to Barcelona from Gaborone to attend an educational conference and am reasonably excited as most of my travelling for work is done within Botswana. I check in two hours before take-off, say goodbye to the family, go through security and out onto the warm tarmac to board SA1784, the 17:15 service to Johannesburg. Hand luggage is handed in at the steps and we take our seats and listen to the safety demonstration before being sprayed with insecticide. And that is when the trouble starts.

The port engine refuses to start and we are offloaded. It is then I found out that this Dash-8 has been sat on the apron since it originally refused to start at 11am. By this time, some of the morning passengers have been sprayed with insecticide four times. They are mosquito free but not going anywhere.

Once back in the terminal, a flustered SA Express official refuses to answer any questions before saying she is going to the office to ‘make a plan’. We do not see her again. After about 20 minutes I chat with a very pleasant gentleman working for SAX and he tells me those with connections are being put on an unscheduled 18:30 flight. In the meantime, an Airlink CRJ200 arrives, is turned around and departs. Our empty Embraer 120 then lands at 18:10, but it takes half an hour to organise who is flying on it and when we do board at 18:40 one passenger is missing and the manifest is incorrect. The passenger is found but the manifest only arrives at 19:10, meaning it has taken an hour to load 30 passengers. We eventually take off at 19:15.

Arriving at OR Tambo at 20:00, it is 10 minutes before the hand luggage is unloaded and our bus takes us under my departing Swiss Air flight to Zurich before dropping us at the terminal. A spirited sprint to the transfer desk sees me and a fellow passenger arrive five minutes too late for the connection. We are helped by a pleasant gentleman and a very energetic older lady at the transfer desk. I am told that there is a KLM flight that would take me via Amsterdam that evening and there are seats available. However, the SAX ticket office closed at 19:30 and they cannot book the ticket from the transfer desk. Several phone calls are made to the Domestic office upstairs which is supposedly open until 21:00, but no-one answers the phone – meaning that half an hour before closing everyone has gone home. I am told there is no more they can do and to go to the transit hotel where there is a voucher waiting. I go to the hotel and there is no voucher so it is back to the transfer desk to get a new one. I am told to come back at 08:00 to rebook my Swiss flight. I check into the hotel at 21:15 and have a R150 supper, courtesy of SAX. At least I am luckier than my fellow traveller. His flights are on separate tickets so he has to purchase a new ticket via his travel agent.

Next morning, I am at the desk at 08:00 to be barely greeted by the early morning shift who are still applying makeup. Indeed, the girl on the next counter takes a couple of attempts and a comical encounter with a wet-wipe to get her lipstick right. I am offered lunch and dinner vouchers as they cannot help at the moment, but I am told I should come back at 12:00.

Lunchtime, I am back at the transfer desk to be told I have been rebooked on that evening’s Swiss Air flight but there is a problem printing the boarding pass so I should come back at 16:00.

Back at the desk at teatime and there is a new shift. Unsurprisingly, they know nothing about me and my flight has not been booked. This takes 15 minutes of explanation before the gentleman serving me disappears upstairs to the ticket office and returns half an hour later with a new ticket. I check in with Swiss and eventually relax.

The Zurich flight is very pleasant and, despite only having an hour in between connections, I make the Barcelona gate with some time to spare. I arrive three hours late for the second day of my two day conference, but still I am impressed by my hosts and have a great time. Next morning I have time to visit the Camp Nou before returning to the airport. 

The flight to Zurich is again pleasant although we land in a blizzard. Again, despite having only an hour between connections, they are easily made and I am soon on board their Johannesburg flight. It is now snowing heavens high and de-icing means that we take-off 40 minutes late but the captain assures us he will make up the time. True to his word, we touch down twenty minutes early at 10:20 Sunday morning.

I am soon at the SAX gate for SA1767 which is due to leave at 11:30. The boarding is delayed and then starts slowly – not a good sign. Sure enough, I am denied boarding along with another 30 passengers. The reason? The 74 seat Dash-8 has a technical problem and has been replaced by a 30 seat Embraer. We are rebooked on SA1777, a new flight, at 14:30. Many passengers are furious and one is in tears. The SAX member of staff dealing with us tells me that technical issues are a regular occurrence and are becoming even more common.

We are given a R70 voucher for a restaurant where the cheapest sandwich is R69. If you wanted a drink of any sort your meal choices were either a muffin or ice cream. Eventually we board ZS-SOB. As we entered there was a noticeable smell of vomit in the cabin and the source was discovered by the lady in 10A whose seatbelt was covered in traces of the previous occupant’s last meal. We arrived in Gaborone at 15:40 to an ironic round of applause. I was too tired to join in.

Between checking in on Wednesday afternoon and returning Sunday teatime I had missed half of my conference and had spent more time in ORT than actually at my destination. However, my experience really only acts to highlight many issues facing SA Express.

Most concerning is safety. On the departure board on Sunday at ORT more than 40% of the SA and SA Express flights were delayed, several for ‘technical’ reasons. Staff at ORT admitted this was a constant occurrence and one of the technicians at Gaborone described our Dash-8 as ‘finished’. It was widely reported at the end of last year that SA Express simply had run out of money to keep its leased aircraft in a serviceable condition. And of course the last time it had a run of serviceability issues it was grounded by the SACAA over concerns about it maintenance procedures and record keeping. It is fair to ask what has changed since 2016?

Some staff I spoke to were hoping that the proposed merger with a slimmed down SAA would help overcome the maintenance concerns. By keeping a smaller fleet of the newer aircraft, their thinking was that service issues would be minimised. It has to be questioned, though, whether merging two failing airlines with similar management problems can lead to success.

Communication and service are problems all companies face and dealing with your customers, even though they are not always right, is key to success. SA Express’ communication with its passengers was almost non-existent. Two members of staff did stand out for offering realistic information, but even then I had to seek them out. In an age when I can book a flight anywhere at any time using my phone, it is unbelievable that SAA/SAX cannot seem to book a flight in its main hub after 7:30pm. The fact that the final flight had not been properly cleaned and still had vomit on one of its seat belts summed up the level of service offered.

If these delays had happened in Europe I would have been entitled to €850 compensations in addition to meals and hotel. Would a SADC system of compensation work? Would it force airlines to improve their service delivery? It would not need to be set at European levels (though given local ticket prices, perhaps it should) but it would both help relieve the anger of passengers and also encourage airlines to fulfil the contract they enter into when they sell a ticket. A voucher for half a meal is not compensation, something SAX appears not to understand.

The one ray of hope for SAX was the professionalism of about three quarters of the staff I met. They were working hard and doing their best in really trying situations and still going the extra mile for the customer. They are very aware that their jobs depend on it. However, they are being betrayed by the other quarter who seem disinterested in their customers and a management that seems to be running the airline into the ground.

Would the world miss SAA and its little sister? Yes, it is an airline with a long pedigree and many people have happy memories. However, those memories seem to belong to an older generation and why the current generation of taxpayers should continue to subsidise passenger flights in a country with so many other needs is a question constantly being asked. If SAA and SAX were to cease operations it would lead to considerable short term job losses, but it would also open up vital routes to real competition and create sustainable opportunities. The whole of Southern Africa could benefit and, as to the question would the world miss SAA, it is doubtful if the world would even notice its demise.

Aftermath

Shortly after the publication of this article, the SACAA grounded SA Express due to “serious safety”. These concerns were to due to servicing issues, with paperwork not matching up with aircraft -  suggesting at the very least gross incompetence and at worst blatant corruption with regard to maintenance contracts. 

After much work, part of the fleet were awarded airworthiness certificates and the airline restarted flights in August, 2018.

However, the airline continued to make ever increasing losses (costing the tax payer between R500 and R1000 rand per passenger per flight) and entered Business Rescue, a South African form of bankruptcy protection, in February 2020. The global shut down caused by Covid hit less than a month later, effectively killing SA Express forever. Few tears were shed.

Its big sister, SAA, had its own near death experience, going into Business Rescue a year earlier than SA Express and also ceasing operations during Covid. It was later resuscitated in a slimmed down form with private partners, taking to the air again in September 2021. Despite not having flown for 18 months, Skytrax ranked it the second best airline in Africa in 2021. A sad state of affairs for the continent.