FlySafair / Safair Operations
Reviews and Complaints

Good Day,

Ref : JNBFA10789

On the 29th May 2016 my husband, myself and two friends returned from a holiday trip to CPT. At OR Tambo one of bags did not arrive. A Fly Safair representative came to assist. I completed a form and submitted the luggage tags. At this point we discovered that the lady at CPT international mixed up the luggage of the four passengers mentioned above. At this point we were not sure under whose name my lost bag would be linked to.

I asked the representative what is the claim procedure and I was told confidently don't worry you won't need to claim we will find your bag. It is now 2 months later and nothing. Not even feedback. Just being ignored. I have been calling periodically to find out whats happening and I am being given the run around. I called a few weeks back and was told that my file was archived as it was an old case. The case hasn't been resolved yet why is being pushed in the back. I then had to resend my claim form which I eventually got after Shelly had to follow up and ask them to send it to me. I sent the form to the email indicated on the form on the 7 April 2016. I then received feedback from Debbie and I was told it was submitted to flysafair and they are waiting for feedback. I contacted Flysafair today and was told that they are waiting for the legal department to provide feedback. It is going on two months and I am still waiting for the legal department to get back to me. In my opinion, it is a simple solution: 1. Return my luggage to me (This I believe might be impossible due to the amount of time that has passed) or 2. Reimburse me for my lost luggage. I have submitted the claim with a description of my contents to [protected]@swissport.co.za. I now have to replace my contents using funds that are allocated for other things. This is not right. I would appreciate it if a satisfactory resolution can be found regarding my claim so that we can put this incident to rest.

Evening ([protected]@flysafair.zendesk.com) i called in to ask to speak to someone about this, i got [protected]@flysafair.co.za email, and i mailed her, but no reply. I am very upset with regards to a flight booked for my retired parents from Cape Town - Durban 24th November 2015 @ 6.20am The booking was for 4 Adults (2 young and 2 old) quite some time ago, for flight FA160 Their seats were booked in advance, and paid additional required fee to select the seats which are in front of the aircraft. Please note these are 2 retired individuals that paid extra for security of seating and paid immediately for tickets and the seats with their pension, all procedure was followed with regards to online checking and confirmation of the seats. Upon boarding the aircraft they were told they can not sit on their selected, and paid seats due to weight management, i completely understand why they were shifted due to uneven weight distribution for taking off, but is absurd that they then forfeit their seats which were paid for and not compensated for their suffering or loss. I cannot understand why possibly the oldest passengers were put in discomfort, where in my experiences world wide across >70% of airlines focuses on 1) oldest passengers or disabled, then 2) mothers and babies, 3) families and lastly single or 18 - 40 year old passengers. I'm currently doing a review on the airlines to have a students choice for flights in South Africa to Stellenbosch University students as the holiday and festive season is upon us. I'm aware of the price or costs paid vs quality of classes (economy vs business class service and prices), and that Flysafair is fairly new in the market, but logic and kind services does not cost anything, so why fail at it? i apologize for being blunt or possibly coming across negatively, but with this kind of service or experience please motivate why the trending domestic airline (Flysafair) should be promoted besides having lowest or low prices for students/other target markets, and being able to make it affordable for most to fly. How will Flysafair deal with issues like this and in particular this Case of my parents and sister and brother in-law that paid for seats that were not given. NB, They are flying back to Cape Town on Friday 27th November 2015

My Fiance and I had a flight scheduled for 17h55 on the 07th December 2015, departing from Durban International to OR Tambo in Jozi. We even booked our car rental from their affiliation company 1st Car Rentals (absolute delightful service). After our trip in Durban we returned the car rental and proceeded to check in at 16h20, where we were told that check in was closed. Now by all means I can understand the check in policy times however the story gets far worse when the aircraft was rescheduled to not only our knowledge but to a further nine ( yes 9) passengers that the flight would be departing at 17h50. Therefore eleven passengers were now stranded, business people, three young children, a woman whose cousin was liaising with her from the boarding gate line informing her that the boarding gates had not even opened and the que for it was long. All eleven passengers had no yes NO notification that the departing schedule was changed to earlier and all arriving at check in at 16h20... IT GETS WORSE... We were then all sent through to the "ticket sales"counter where we were all met with unaccommodating, unhelpful and the most non-chalant staff I have ever encountered in my life (nevermind my local and international travels). They had this very "I DONT CARE ATTITUDE". They then proceeded to delay us even further until the aircraft had actually departed! Where if they assisted all eleven of us at 16h20 we would have all been boarded seated and ready prior to 17h50 (EARLY DEPARTURE TIME), to arrive back home to our families (I have three children waiting at home), business meetings (a gent had to cancel an imperative meeting for his company), work (some of us do take our jobs a lot more seriously than FlySafair staff). OH... IT GETS WORSE! Once the ground aircraft supervisor (who at no speed) - arrived with his rather smug attitude and NO care, NO compassion or ability to address the situation in a professional and 'the client always comes first" attitude, he chose to offer a rather patronising smile to us all, then ran off to the office and conspired with his fellows behind closed doors as to their version of the incident. At the arrival of the SAP police who were concerned at the crowed of people and what the issue was he came out. It took an airport SAP officer to attempt finding a resolution to FlySafairs unacommodated clients (WHO WILL NEVER UTILISE THE AIRLINE AGAIN - NO MATTER HOW 'LOW-COST' - which by the way was only roughly about R150 cheaper than MANGO! AND SO IT GETS WORSE... One and only one - gentleman (possibly in fear of being mentioned) - assists in trying to book us on flights for the 8th (yes the NEXT DAY - that was their last flight for the day!) - And so we PAY MORE - YES PAY AGAIN! My fiancée and I book for the first morning flight - scheduled to depart at 07h10 and arrive in Jozi at 08h20. (FUNNY) The flight only departed at 09h00! Furthermore - a fellow passenger chatted with a friend who he was to meet in Jozi only to find that his FlySafair flight from Cape Town was hugely delayed as well. My fiancée was late for his booked clients and I had contractors waiting at my house for work and so the list goes on. Our first experience with this airline will undoubtedly be our last! And then of course there is the matter of no one answering both the sharecall and head office phone numbers - LOL!

On 06/07/2015 I received a “Booking Confirmation” CONFIRMING that that the flight was booked. I printed this out and made ALL OTHER ARRANGMENTS (a taxi, accommodation, lifts to OR TAMBO etc) accordingly. If you have a look at the booking you will see that I initially booked the later flight and phone within minutes to change it to the earlier flight and paid the R800 (VAT incl) penalty, because the children wanted/needed to be in Plettenberg Bay earlier. I also paid the R160 (VAT incl) Prebooked Seat. This morning when we wanted to book the passengers in and print their boarding passes, we saw that there was NO flight FA 222 at 6:30 and the children were on flight FA 224 at 9:35! On top of this there was NO pre-booked seat – for which I paid the R160: • No cancellation or changing notification for “Booking Reference: W5DJNJ” was send to ANY of the passengers by FlySafair – only another “Reservation Confirmation: W5DJNJ” (please note that the one send on 07/11/2015 looked exactly like the one that was send on 06/07/2015, see attached). There was absolutely no indication in subject or email alerting the fact that the flight was cancelled (for which I was initially penalized)! • Neither of the passengers was contacted by the Airline telephonically nor were any sms’s received as requested on the “Guest information” reason in populated field is “Please enter your mobile number so the we may send you flight updates”. I do believe that a cancellation on the part of FlySafair justify such a sms – never received it. • No alternative arrangements could be made for transport to OR Tambo and the passengers arrived at OR Tambo at 5:20, so had to wait 3 and half hour before they could board

This letter I wrote to FlySafair describes my whole ordeal:

Last night I had by far the worst experience I’ve ever had with any airliner. As I sit here typing this letter, still in complete disbelief, I cannot seem to shake last night’s ordeal from my mind.

For the last 30 years, I have been an avid traveller. I’ve taken hundreds of flights up and down the country with practically every airliner there is. So when my wife and I decided to take a trip to Johannesburg last week, I was pleasantly surprised with FlySafair’s competitive rates. We bought return tickets and flew from Cape Town to Johannesburg last Thursday (04/08/2014). It was my first time flying with this airliner and the flight went pretty much without a hitch. Despite a pretty hard landing when the wheels hit the O.R. Tambo International tarmac, my immediate impression of Flysafair was money well spent. Little did I know, my return flight would turn out to be a complete disaster. A nightmare I cannot wait to forget.

We were booked on flight 1007 which was scheduled to depart from O.R. Tambo International at 17:20 yesterday (08/12/2014). We took the Gautrain and arrived at the check-in well before the “40 minutes prior to departure” check-in requirement. There was an extremely long queue and only 2 ground staff working the check-ins, with constant delays at that. Needless to say, it took us ages to get to the check-in desk and by the time we arrived at the front… “Sorry sir, the gates have closed for your flight.”
I was enraged. I found it extremely difficult trying to understand how a delay caused by the airliner’s lack of staff was the reason given for us missing the flight we had booked weeks in advance - and the 10 other passengers from flight 1007 standing behind me in the queue were equally shocked and baffled. The gentleman behind the counter rudely dismissed us all saying there was nothing he could do and we needed to go to the ticket desk to resolve the matter.

We marched over to the ticket desk only to find an even more enraged crowd of passengers queuing there. It turns out they were all on a flight that left at 12pm midday and was turned around halfway to Cape Town due to an unexplained malfunction on the aircraft. They were forced to land back at O.R. Tambo. The time was now 17:30 and still they had no idea as to where they stood with regards to getting to Cape Town. People were traumatized, tired, confused and verbally expressing their anger towards the EXTREMELY unhelpful FlySafair staff, who in all honesty, had absolutely no idea what was going on themselves. The lack of communication was shocking. I don’t think anyone would believe how disorganised and unprofessional this airliner was unless they were there to see it for themselves.

When I got to the front of the queue at the ticket desk, the lady told me we needed to purchase stand-by tickets for the next flight. Absolutely outraged, I demanded to speak to a manager but there was no manager to speak to. All the ticket desk staff did was send us BACK to the check-in queue. The crowd was furious. They were sending us back and forth with no explanation on what we needed to do or who we needed to speak to. We queued for another half an hour and when I eventually got to the front, the check-in lady looked even more confused than I was. The patience of the crowd was at its end and people started skipping the queues, demanding assistance and answers that were simply not provided. They sent me to the supervisor, I queued again to speak to him and by the time I got to him, he sent me back to the check-in queue. When I got there, they sent me back to him. It was utterly ridiculous. An absolute joke.

After we all made a sufficient scene, someone finally decided to book all of us on flight 1005, which as it turned out, was an impromptu flight with no confirmed departure time. The ticket lady hands me 2 tickets – one for my wife and one for myself. I look at the tickets and one ticket has half of my wife’s first name and the other ticket has the other half of her 1st name. It seems adding 2 separate names to 2 separate tickets was too tall an order for the highly trained ground staff to handle. It took another 15mins to fix.
They send us to gate E5 to board. Everyone just sat there waiting for the gate to open so we could finally board. Still, no answers were provided. They couldn’t tell us when we were boarding, when we were departing, nothing. I remember looking around at the panicked crowd in the queue, everyone frantically on their mobile phones speaking to family members, crying, trying to make arrangements for an unconfirmed arrival at an unassured destination. At one point I was lying flat on my back so I could rest my tired legs. It took another hour before the gates opened.

The relief of finally getting in the bus to board was quickly short-lived when we were taxied to the absolute furthest part of the airport from the terminus. Numbed by disbelief at this point, people joked that FlySafair had given up on flying us and decided to drive us to Cape Town instead. By the time we got to the aircraft (a seemingly spare aircraft with Snoopy the dog painted on the side of the plane – this looks promising!), we couldn’t wait to just get on the damn plane already. Everyone readied their luggage to move from the bus to the plane but, as we should have expected, the bus doors didn’t open. We just stood there, luggage in hand waiting for the doors to open. It was pouring with rain, the bus was packed to the maximum, there was no place to sit, people were upset, hungry, absolutely exhausted and the bus doors JUST. DIDN’T. OPEN. No word from staff, no explanation as to why we were just standing there, we all just looked at each other shocked to the core at this farce of an airliner. How could they do this to us? One elderly lady had no room to manoeuvre and fell in the bus. Another had to scream at the bus driver to open the doors as we all were suffocating from the lack of oxygen. They finally open the damn doors, but not to board, just to give us some air. I’m standing there at the entrance of the door, the heavy sideways rain just pouring all over me. My clothes wet, my bag wet. My wife on the brink of tears. We stood there in the bus for another full hour before a staff member came to us with an update. She told us that the reason we weren’t allowed to board is because the captain is afraid that we would become impatient on the plane and cause a scene. Like REALLY? At this point I’m sure we all were WELL past that. We had to “promise to behave” and they would let us on the plane. Nobody really cared what the woman had to say, we just wanted to board already.

Instead of taking us closer to the plane, we had to run from the bus all the way to the back of the plane in pouring rain. A good 100m. Elderly people, babies, a woman in a wheelchair, all scurrying frantically in the pouring rain to the back of the aircraft. By the time we got in, we were soaked. “Just sit anywhere” they tell us. I was too disgusted to even laugh at this comedy of blunders. We take our random seats and the captain makes an announcement over the PA system, “Ladies and gentlemen thank you for your patience. We will soon be departing to Mauritius.” The joke was in seriously bad taste. He continued saying that the plane had not even been refuelled yet. We sat for another hour before we lifted off the O.R. Tambo runway at 10pm.

By the time the flight was in the air, I could already feel myself getting sick. As I sit here typing this miserable letter, I have a full-blown flu and I’ve been at work since 6:30am after getting something like 3 hours sleep because I arrived at home after 1am due to my initial transportation arrangements being stuffed up by this whole ordeal.

I am absolutely DISGUSTED by this airliner. It seems like the reason you are so cheap is because you get what you pay for. Absolute ###. From here on, I intend to make it my mission to let everyone know exactly what your airliner is about. Not because I want to be nasty, but because I wouldn’t want anyone else to go through what we experienced last night. And to make it worse, it’s like you don’t even care. All we got was a half-assed “I’m sorry” and we were told to enjoy our stay in Cape Town. If this is the kind of service we can expect from a company that’s proudly been flying for “49 years”, then I strongly suggest you cut your losses, save innocent travellers a world of trauma, inconvenience and discomfort… and just call it a day. If you can’t do the job, you really shouldn’t offer the service.

Absolutely appalled.