Jetted back into Cape Town last night. Spent four hours in Joburg airport, after being shuffled off our plane because of the runway incident in CT. What was at first a slight inconvenience soon turned into a fiasco of note.

Apparently one of SAA’s budding female (not that there’s anything wrong with that!) trainee pilots took a wrong turn and managed to put the plane into some sand off the runway with the tail blocking both the incoming and outgoing runways. This managed to close the entire airport down for some four hours. Affecting three SAA flights alone, not counting the other airlines.

Meanwhile, back in the O R Tambo airport in Johannesburg, chaos reigned! No visible SAA staff to guide or reassure passengers, just some vague announcement that passengers should get off the plane, enter through domestic arrivals and then re-enter through domestic departures, before reporting to the SAA booth at gate E? An old man and an elderly lady (who were quite clearly struggling to get up and down the stairs and were being assisted by other people) should have been offered wheelchair assistance by SAA at the very least.

While Nationwide and Mango were giving their passengers refreshment vouchers and communicating with them, SAA advised that they were three times as big as all the other airlines and therefore could not possibly hand out refreshment vouchers. Staff on the ground were phoning management for assistance as (in their own words) “it is chaos down here” but were quickly told that they should simply wait for an announcement to be made in due course.

Further announcements advised that flights had been delayed indefinitely due to technical problems in Cape Town.

Reactions from stranded passengers ranged from placid sitting and waiting, to screaming tantrums with bad language being thrown at all and sundry. Some people were missing major parties, some wedding rehearsals and others were having their pets hauled back to the kennels for another day. Most were busy trying to make alternate pick-up arrangements with no idea of any ETA.

Whilst we all agree that this was an accident, the general consensus was that SAA management had absolutely no consideration for their passengers whatsoever.

With all the time on our hands, we couldn’t help but imagine what could happen in a real disaster - airport closed for a week perhaps?

2010. Ahem. SAA needs to pull up their socks. Or we all need to buckle up for a bumpy ride ahead.