Flight or fight

We love going to Jo’burg. It’s family fun and bonding, it’s enjoying familiar favourites off unfamiliar menus with people we love and it’s all for the price of a short plane ride. That was before this weekend, before that plane ride became so painful a mission that we may have to think twice, nay, three times, before booking our next trip. It’s not that we won’t go, it’s just that we won’t go on Kulula.com.

What was supposed to be a 3 o’clock flight that would have us in Jo’burg well before Shabbat dinner, became a 5 o'clock flight which only left Durban around 7! Obviously they don’t take into consideration how much planning goes into a trip with an infant- timing the meals, sleeps, awake times, car journeys and flying time so that it all becomes as manageable as possible. But no, they don’t care to shift you from a mid-afternoon flight to a night-time flight and then to an evening flight, which lands up only leaving at night time anyway and to inform you of all of this via sms an hour before you're expecting to leave.

That don’t-care attitude of Kulula.com’s was reinforced on the journey home when we were again delayed and made to wait for the flight not only in the airport, but on the shuttle bus to the aircraft, on the stairway up to the plane and in the plane itself for a further 20 minutes. Can you imagine doing all this waiting with a 1 year old whose absolute worst thing is having his movement restrained?

We were the ones with the crying baby.

Frazzled, but back on terra firma, the three of us were amongst the last people waiting for luggage. That always sucks. Clever Robbie went to ask some airline staff standing by the branded kiosk basically watching us and laughing. They said that all fragile baggage was waiting elsewhere. Thanks. Someone could have told us when we checked in, or when we were the handful of idiots left at the conveyerbelt and there were a handful of bags tucked away in some obscure corner of the lovely new King Shaka International airport.

I considered writing a letter of complaint but after the hours I spent on hold for their “customer care” department on Friday, their stupid sms system, their blatantly rude staff and their lame jokes, I figure their communication structures have broken down. The best I can hope for is that potential customers who search Kulula.com find this article, along with the many others probably out there, and think twice, nay, three times, before flying with this irritating and unreliable airline.