hi everyone,
came across this from references in SQTalk, and have in fact 1st posted this there, but thought it could serve a cautionary tale to wider audience here
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Introduction
After 5 days here, my hosts drove me to the airport for the GBE (Gaborone, Botswana) flight to JNB, and connecting flight to SIN. South African Express SA1764 [this little detail will prove pertinent later in the story] was supposed to be a 1 hr hop on DASH8. Scheduled to take off at 11:05am, my hosts and I arrived at GBE at 09:40am. As we were checking in, an announcement was made that the flight's cancelled.
Now imagine a small single-story airport packed with passengers trying to check in. Next to "FIRE, FIRE", this was probably the best way to start a pandemonium. And that's exactly what happened. The whole airport exploded with protests and shouts.
My Botswana hosts were in their elements, getting ahead of the near-stampede to get to the SA Express office to find out what was happening. Apparently, the inbound DASH8 had broken down and so there was to be no plane out. The next available flight was a Air Botswana flight ETD 13:00. So the queue - best described as chaos in my opinion - was to get prioritised on this.
SA Express office, with residual crowd; most have begun to crowd the Air Botswana desk for re-booking, including yrs truly who took this from the queue
the small GBE cafe, where each bumped off pax is awarded Botswana Pula 30 of F&B
Hitch - Air Botswana AP205 would only land in JNB at 14:30; and SQ479 was scheduled to depart JNB for SIN at 14:35, and its the only daily direct flight. The SA Express agent said there's nothing he could do; I told myself - SMILE - and then raised my voice, "Can you organise me out to HKG, PER, DXB, BOM, anywhere, so i can catch a connecting flight to SIN." He, "all economy flights full." I, "I'm on Business class." He, clikketty-clakkety on the only PC in the office, while pax behind me call their wives, their mothers, their agents, their... Printer came alive, you know, the dot-matrix type that the karang guni man collects to collect dust. Tear off. Agent, "Sir, you can catch SA286 JNB-HKG, and CX735 HKG-SIN, eta SIN 18:10". Sigh, guess that's the only way. Lost an entire day - SQ479 was supposed to land Sat 27 Mar at 07:05am; now I'll only reach SIN 18:10.
departing from GBE gates
coming up
GBE-JNB on AP205