Last SAA repatriation flight out of Europe leaves 45 behind

The last SAA repatriation flight out of Europe ended in chaos this weekend as about 45 stranded South Africans were left behind in Frankfurt when delayed Flight SA 2691 eventually took off on Saturday evening.

Angry abandoned passengers were told they would have to find and pay for their hotels and transport. They said SAA had overbooked the flight. And then a jammed emergency evacuation slide added to the complications, bumping even more passengers off the plane. 

They complained of a generally chaotic organisation by SAA which they said had failed to inform several of the bumped passengers that they had been rerouted via Amsterdam to catch a KLM repatriation flight to South Africa from there. 

Both the SAA flight from Frankfurt via Moscow and the KLM flight landed safely at OR Tambo International Airport, Johannesburg on Sunday morning and the passengers were moved into the standard 14 days of quarantine.

But the 45 left behind were left still scrambling to try to find their way home. Late on Sunday one said it seemed that SAA had at last arranged for them to fly to Amsterdam to catch another KLM flight to Cape Town on Monday.

This passenger said SAA had also agreed to reimburse them for the costs of their hotels in Frankfurt. She commended SAA staff at Frankfurt airport — but not SAA as a whole. 

This passenger said the whole experience had been “very stressful and exhausting. A lot of these people have been stranded in Europe for a long time and this was the last flight out of Europe.

“There was a lot of confusion and SAA, Dirco (the Department of International Relations and Co-operation) and SA embassies in Europe were all putting up their hands and saying ‘This is not our fault’. ” She pointed especially to a statement by Dirco spokesperson Lunga Ngqengelele on News24 on Friday in which he said he was not even aware of the Frankfurt flight. This seemed strange to the passengers as Dirco has to authorise all repatriation flights. 

Meanwhile, SAA told the stranded passengers left behind in Frankfurt that it couldn’t help them with hotel and transport costs in Frankfurt as this was a repatriation flight, making the SA government responsible for those costs.

This passenger — who declined to be named for fear she might also be bumped off the KLM flight in retaliation — said many of the stranded passengers couldn’t afford the extra accommodation and transport, but the group had got together and managed to organise their costs, in part by contacting their employers. 

Flight SA 2691 was originally scheduled to leave Frankfurt at 13.55 on Friday. Some passengers who had flown in from elsewhere had been camping at the departure gate since Monday because they could not get through immigration into Germany as they did not have the right visas, said Massimo Biancheri, an oil and gas technician who has been stuck in Europe since late January when his contract in Azerbaijan ended.

He said when he arrived at check-in, he discovered the flight had been overbooked — several people who had already been issued e-tickets were told they were not on the flight

“Families and disabled that should be given priority boarding were pushed to the side and ignored. Disabled individuals that need mobility assistance were told to ‘just walk’. ”

Those who were allowed to board discovered that the faulty door had still not been fixed and that SAA had cordoned off another 40 seats for safety reasons.

Of those passengers who had paid and had been ticketed, SAA had had to leave about 45 behind because of a fault with the emergency escape slide from one of the doors.