anyone flown with South African Airways? What are they like?

Answer 1

They are great, and by far the best African airline.
They are upgrading their cabin seats and entertainment system, the legroom in Business and First is incredible! Even more than British Airways and Emirates!

Legroom:
FIRST: 83"
BUSINESS: 78"
ECONOMY: 32"-34"

Here are some passenger opinions :

South African Airways - by Les Anthany
2 October 2006

I recently flew SAA roundtrip from Dulles to Capetown (via) Jo'burg. This was my first experience with SAA and we flew economy. We were presently surprised. Aircraft was very nice, service was good, food was pleasant, space was adequate. The individual video units were the best and made time go by faster. The only complaint was connecting to Capetown in Jo'burg -- JNB airport is not user friendly and it was a pain to change to the domestic terminal.
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South African Airways - by Mark Tufts
24 September 2006

Cape Town to Durban on a new A319. Great flight and service. I really was impressed. Food good, too, which is not an often found comment about airline food. Incidentally, SAA's prices are as good these days as the low-cost carriers if you book a little bit in advance and are not fussy about exactly when you fly.
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South African Airways - by Martha Santos
26 August 2006

GRU (Sao Paulo)-JNB and return. Very comfortable long-haul flight in economy. Food and wine (complimentary!) were good, but the long trip was really made bearable by excellent movie choices from the inflight entertainment system. Staff is friendly, helpful, and even tried to speak some Portuguese!
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For more info: http://www.airlinequality.com/

and for South African inflight meals: http://www.airlinemeals.net/

Answer 2

First of all, it was a Nationwide plane whose engin fell off and it wasn't near fatal, as the planes are designed to be able to fly with just one engin. It was merely a safety precaution that they did the emergency landing, should something else happen to the other engin. Secondly, SAA has been busy with plans of restructurings for quite a while now - their objective to actually make a profit. Maverick (a South African magazine) had an interesting article on SAA about 3 months ago (I couldn't find anything regarding iton the web though - sorry, their site is being updated). In short it stated that SAA should make up it's mind wheter they want to be profit driven or beg money from the taxpayer in order to stay in business. Now this should be an easy question - especially if you are a taxpayer subsidizing flying costs... But SAA plays a huge role in supporting the economy and bringing people to the country in order to spend money which in turn flows to our pockets. I think the example used was how the flight between Jo'burg and Kinshasa is actually costing the company money, but the average person on the flight spends something like $1 000 per day in South Africa... OK, back to the question. I am saddened to see that SAA has opted for the profit margin which of course lead to the restructurings. This means 225 pilots, professional people, have lost their jobs. Be they black or white - they were qualified to be there and have done a good job thus far (I don't recall any recent accidents). The remaining pilots are still qualified though, so I don't see why there should be a safety risk based on the colour of their skin. As this was a business decision, I don't think SAA would want their reputation to go to waste, and will make sure that the safety standards are still very high. The addisional funds may lead to better aircraft and of course more spent on maintinance, which, I believe, to be a good thing. To sum it up - I'm planning on flying to Israel, Australia and Spain via SAA next year. Maybe I'm brave, maybe I'm stupid, but I do think it is unfair to label the remaining pilots inadequate and unsafe as they have not proven to be so in the past. Where qualifications come in, I don't care what colour your skin is, if you had the intellect and determination to get it - well done! You deserve to be in that position!

Answer 3

They are good but no better than BA or virgin who offer non stop flights from the UK Seat pitch is the same unless you are on on of the 747's which has economy seats up stair where its 38 inches then by far the best but they have now upgrades to an A340 -600 on the cape town route with 31 inches in all economy seats

Answer 4

I have not flown SAA, but I found some websites that had reviews on them:

http://www.airlinequality.com/Forum/saa.htm

http://xrl.us/saareviews44

Answer 5

Ignore Alf - lying as usual - racist. SAA is considered the safest and best African airline and on par with the other well-known international airlines.

Answer 6

Bit risky to fly with them.They have just introduced a programme that trains Pilots in about half the time it takes everybody else and have been severely criticised by the World Airline authorities. All part of their zealous efforts to bring Africans up to 1st World standards. Compared to other major Air;ines i.e. British,Virgin,Lufthansa,KLM etc their service is pretty poor. They confuse being obsequious with service and I would never fly with them long haul. Rather use a safe Airline because with them you cannot trust anything they tell you.

Answer 7

They are not to bad actually... They try to be quite helpful... I have always had a pleasent trip when frying with SAA.

Answer 8

Best airline in Africa!! world class.

Answer 9

they cancel flights often , in africa thats that way it is they lost my suitcase never found it ,took 1 year to pay me and gave very little , i had to call them every month they lost the paper work even on me ,not very bright workers , but the food on the plane is nohting to rave about either the crew are friendly the planes go everywhere in africa so they are the ones to use in africa going to africa i wouldnt fly them