Flight: SA357
Route: JNB-CPT
Aircraft: A319
Flight Date: 04.02.2022
Flight Time: 01h 54min
Class: Business
South African Airways, an airline that was on a constant downwards trail in terms of profitability in the last years, then finally, the corona crisis broke its neck and the airline was grounded for more than one year. Now, only a few weeks before my trip to South Africa, the airline restarted services and I was really curious on how the airline is now performing with loads of low-cost competition within South Africa (British Airways, Kulula, Safair, Cem Air and of course its biggest, Airlink). The route I flew, was a short 2h hop from Johannesburg to Cape town. On this route, normally a A319 is used, as in my case as well.
Boarding started in a complete mess, the priority lane consisted of all passengers being courageous enough to stand in this lane and no one tried to organize the queue. This made boarding quite annoying. When being on board, they were still refueling the plane, extremely risky, as outside was one of the hardest thunderstorms I’ve ever experienced. At that time, the airport was still running normally, only when a lightning stroke our plane, the airport was shut down. This resulted in a delayed departure of quite some time, this combined with the resolving of a technical problem, departure was 45min late.
The A319 comes with nice but really old business class seats in a 3-2 config and an economy with 3-3 seat arrangement. I was seated in Business, so I can’t give a tour of its economy product. The seats come a bit wider than the economy seats, as well you get more legroom. The seats are comfortable, but it of course can’t be compared to the full flat seats sometimes used in a320’s but either with the economy seats used in Europe. This is it with the positive things about the seat. Negative is, that the seat comes with a rather big table, but considering how old the seats seemed, it was really worn out and had a lack of stability, I didn’t like to cut my meat on it. As well, there is no power source for your electronic devices, on short hops like the one I took, this isn’t an issue, but I prefer not to fly to Kinshasa or so on that bird.
Now talking of catering, the catering out of Johannesburg was extremely good, especially compared to what you get when departing on a long-haul plane out of this airport. You could choose between Beef and Fish; both was accompanied by a fresh but rather small salad as well as some kind of muffin as a dessert. The bread was as usual at non-European flights, pretty bad. Besides the food you got quite a selection of drinks, especially the wine selection was verry good, all of these where from cape town which I think is well done, and I was offered a wine Tasting by the crew as I struggled to decide which one to choose, also positive. As well they offered some nice Rooibos tea, which was extremely tasty served with milk. Anyways you couldn’t choose from too many teas.
The crew on this service was just awesome, they let me visit the cockpit where I was welcomed with verry open arms, they also made souvenirs for the flight which was appreciated for me as an avgeek and huge South African Airways fan. The cabin crew was awesome too, they were really trying to make the flight unforgettable for everyone on board, which for my part, they definitely did. They were really open, and always open for a chat which was appreciated.
Something nice to mention also is, that when flying South African Airways in business class, or as a Star Alliance Gold member, you get not just a priority tag attached to your luggage, you also get someone who collects the luggage for you and places them on a red carpet at the front of the luggage belt, this is extremely convenient if you want to leave the airport quickly and don’t want to search for your luggage. Anyways, as cool this is, I wouldn’t miss it if they’d cut this down. I would recommend this, as this is extremely expensive in relation to a mediocre rise of comfort for the premium guests.
All in all, after this flight, I’m really looking forward to my next flight with South African even though I think, it might not be as good as this one. On my flight back, the crew wasn’t as good, but I’ll describe that in one of the following reviews.
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