baggageinhall

SA 221
LHR-CPT
21:00 – 09:50
Seats 2A and 2C
We arrived at LHR a little later than planned. We constantly forget how having a young child with you can make everything take a good half hour more than normal! Terminal 1 at Heathrow is in a state of flux at the moment with *A building new facilities and changing the existing ones. The SAA First and Business Class desks are located towards the far end of the terminal away from most of the crowds. SAA no longer operate the 747-400 and so do not have a First Class cabin. The signs on the queue rope seemed to suggest that the First Class desk was for SAA Platinum FF’s and *G, whilst the Business Class desk was for passengers in the renamed ‘Premium’ cabin as well as *S.

Check-in was uneventful, save that the agent informed me that as my son was linked to my booking, SAA had loaded a childs meal for both of us. Great. She also very kindly blocked the seat next to us (2D) in the vain hope that if the cabin wasn’t full, one of us could move to 2D and the other could use 2C whist our son had 2A. She explained that there was no guarantee that the seat would remain blocked. We thanked her for her efforts knowing that if it happened it was a real bonus, but if not, the SAA seats were big enough to accommodate one of us and an infant.

As she told us this, her colleague on the F desk (who had heard the conversation) reminded her that the second JNB flight of the night was delayed by 2 hours and that some passenger were being transferred onto our CPT flight, the upshot being that the cabin was likely to be full and our ‘blocked’ seat would disappear.

The queue at security was fairly lengthy. There are cards placed at intervals which purport to estimate how close (in time) you are to the front of the queue. There is no ‘FastTrack’ line at T1 so its every man, woman and child for themselves; except when you get near the front and cute child in a pushchair / stroller, gets the lady controlling the queue to divert you down to the empty staff lane at the end. All told, it took 10 minutes to through and a further 5 minutes to get dressed again having had to disrobe several times…

After a brief stop at Travelex to pickup the currency I had reserved the night before, we headed off to the SAA lounge. To anyone who needs to purchase foreign currency at a UK airport, it is worth buying it in advance on the Travelex website as you will (i) get a better rate and (ii) usually be charged little or no commission on the deal. The difference between the deals can be startling.

The SAA lounge is split into two halves, First Class on the left and Business on the right. Since the demise of FC, it is now SAA Platinum FF’s to the left and the rest go right. The Business Class section of the lounge is nothing special at all. It’s the standard fair of seats, a bar (manned) and a small selection of snacks. The space itself is small and I can imagine that with three full flights (circa 100 pax) and a sizeable number of people with shiny FF cards, this place can get uncomfortably crowded and become standing room only. Not so this evening, we snagged a table toward the back and Mrs BiH took Junior off to change into his PJ’s.

A mere 15 minutes later and the first boarding call was made for the Cape Town flight. We packed away our things and made our way out of the lounge walking the short distance to our gate. The gate area was empty and after a brief pause to collapse our pram, we walked down the jetway towards the long thin tube (A346) that would be home for the night.

We were greeted at the door and turned left toward the Premium cabin. There was every indication that it would be full this evening and a quick enquiry of a passing member of cabin crew confirmed that.

Champagne and juice were offered, I balanced mine carefully knowing that I had an infant who was getting a little restless as he wanted to sleep. There was a short delay as some of the cargo was shifted around and as the cabin lights were dimmed, the boy fell asleep. We taxied out and took our place in a relatively short queue taking-off almost an hour behind schedule.

The forward part of the cabin was crewed by two men in their late 40’s. Speaking to both later in the flight, I can say that the man on our side was far more perfunctory and serious than the chap on the other side who seemed to actually enjoy his job!

During the first drinks round, our crew member came over and showed us the manifest. It seems that my fears re catering were well founded. The SAA agent in London with whom I spoke 5 days before the flight had, despite confirming to the contrary, booked ALL three of us a child’s meal. We were told that in light of that, we couldn’t select from the menu until he had had taken everyone else’s order. When I asked if that included those who had been upgraded (I could see from the manifest that 6 people had been – someone had marked UPG in manuscript next to their names), the answer was yes.

Now, I have no idea what impact 2 extra children’s meals had on the number of main course meals loaded in C. The fact that we got regular offerings in the end means that it had been sufficiently over-catered. Nobody would have ended up with chicken nuggets and chips. The question is, where SAA had made a mistake (and the crew acknowledged that), shouldn’t a person booked in C (be it using miles or money) be given priority over an upgraded passenger?

The menus were handed out with the drinks round. I would copy it out here but as I discovered toward the end of the flight, SAA collect the menu cards back in at the end of the flight and reuse them. From memory however it was:

Starter: Salad and a grilled King Prawn
Main: Lamb chops / A vegetarian pasta / Fish / Malay chicken
Desert: Non-specific cake and a cheese platter

Wines: I can’t find the copy of Voyager that I brought home, but it lists 4 reds and 4 whites; two of each are available on any given flight. None of them caught my eye and so I stuck to Champagne.

We decided to use one tray table (our son was comfy sleeping across my lap) and our trays were placed side by side (portrait rather than landscape) so that we could both eat. We were given the children’s starter which was the salad minus the King Prawn. We were told that the only main course left was the lamb, which coincidentally was what we both wanted. Two mouthfuls later and I changed my mind.

Mrs BiH and I are real ‘foodies’, but at the same time are happy to accept the limitations of airline food. That said, the two lamb chops had, by the time they arrived in front of us, been cooked to the point where the meat was brown and dry. I know that some people won’t eat meat that is even remotely pink but this had crossed the pink threshold some days ago…

I gave up after a few more bites and asked for the cheese platter with a glass of port. Much better. The crew were multi-tasking, clearing away dinner, serving drinks and providing everyone with their pillow and blanket. Mrs BiH and I swapped seats so that she had Junior.

The SAA Premium seat on their A340’s has won a number of awards. My recent trips in C have been on LH and NZ. I would rate the SAA seat as being somewhere between the two. It’s better than the LH seat because it is fully flat, but I think the NZ seat is more comfortable because it’s made up of fewer parts and therefore feels less ‘lumpy’. That said, I slept fairly well waking up around 3.5 hours out of CPT when I felt a little hand on my face…

I had asked the crew what time they would begin to serve breakfast and was told that it was between 1.5 and 2 hours from landing. I figured therefore that I had to quietly entertain our son for about 1.5 hours to avoid incurring anyone’s wrath. This was easily done by taking him around the aircraft, feeding him and reading several books (I can now recite ‘Monkey and me’ and “That’s not my monster’ from memory).

Somewhere over Namibia, I found myself trying to eat a piece of fruit with one hand whilst feeding the little monster his cornflakes. I declined the offer of the hot option (eggs of some sort) in part because I wasn’t hungry but also because judging by dinner I was probably going to be disappointed.

As we skirted over the edge of SA the First Officer told us (with a genuine sense of disappointment in his voice) that our approach into CPT was such that we would all be deprived of a great view of Cape Town and Table Mountain! Moments later we began our decent and quickly found ourselves taxing to a remote stand at Cape Town International.

I quickly remembered just how much fun it can be trying to juggle three pieces of hand luggage and small child between two people. I was a little disappointed that our fellow travellers had no hesitation in jostling me out of the way and pushing past me to get the last seat on the bus. I wasn’t asking for help, just a little courtesy.

Once inside the terminal building we joined a short queue (comprising solely of our flight from what I could see) and proceeded through immigration. Just in case there are any US INS officials reading this trip report (unlikely I know!), your equivalent numbers in SA are living proof that smiling, engaging with people and showing a little appreciation that someone wants to visit your country has no negative effect on your ability to perform the very important and solemn task that you are employed to do.

As we walked into the baggage reclaim area an SAA ground agent came up to us and asked if we had a pushchair and if so what it looked like, we replied and she walked off returning a few minutes later with said article – excellent service! My wife realised that she had left her jacket on the aircraft; just as we wondered how difficult it would be to try and retrieve it, one of the cabin crew came into the reclaim area and handed it to us!

Following a short interrogation by Customs we were out into the Cape Town sun and being driven to the Vineyard.