Flight 170 no!

“Never take life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway”
-- Anonymous

We were an excited bunch of 19 women, flying off to Namibia – a first visit to our neighbouring country for most of us. It was our team weekend away... a fun-filled 2 day, 2 night desert excursion…

On arrival at JIA, we all lugged our baggage through to the international departures – finding queues of people all trying to book through for their flights – SAA counters being the worst of the queues. As we were a group booking, the airport staff told us to queue in another area – one that we had to get to by climbing underneath the queue railings.  Whilst waiting for staff to arrive at the teller counters, a couple of the ladies had their bags shrink wrapped to protect them and also to prevent someone rifling through their luggage (they had all watched the “Carte Blanche airport theft report”) – whilst the rest of us ensured that our bags were either padlocked or cable-tied.

The SAA management had obviously called tellers off a “tea break” to book us in as the three women who emerged to the booking counters were surly and rude. After we had all been booked through, we encountered another queue – 40 people deep – to get through passport control (and we want to host Soccer 2010?? ;o) - 2 people on duty when there were counters for 6!

Anyway, once we were all through passport control, we all dived into the duty free shops (as only ladies can do ;o) hoping for some bargains.. only to discover that all passengers going to Namibia and Botswana are not allowed duty free shopping!! So it was off to our next best thing – coffee!

When it was time to board, we all went through to the bus departure gates and were driven half way around the airport to get to our plane!  As we got off the bus, 2 technicians were climbing down the stairs of the plane – apparently the doors hadn’t been able to open so they had quickly fixed it! 

One of the girls casually mentioned that she wasn’t keen on going on this plane, as it had a “scratched nose” and looked like it had been in a bumper bashing!

After finding our seats (I was 4 rows from the back, next to the loo and the crew seat – one of those small planes – 2 seats either side, max. 14 rows), the noise level in the plane went up considerably with all the girls talking to each other over the heads of the other 11 passengers! We were supposed to have taken off at 11:40 am and when the plane started to taxi down to the very last runway of the airport, we were already running 10 minutes late.

The plane sat on the runway on high idle for another 10 minutes when the pilot informed us that he was waiting for a cat to be cleared from the runway. At approx. 12h05 we taxied into position and started our lift off.  As soon as our wheels had left the ground, the passengers at the back of the plane heard (and felt) a huge jolt and noise coming from the back-end of the plane. We all joked that one of the ladies had obviously over-packed and that her luggage had fallen off the plane, and right now bra’s and panties were being strewn around the airport!

Little did we know…

We had been flying for about 10 minutes when our pilot informed us that we had to turn back and return to the airport as the tower reported that they had found something on our runway and thought that it could be from our plane…

The pilot flew in a huge circle (obviously dumping as much fuel as possible) and started our return to the airport. On our decent, we noticed that the cabin crew (a very green and new team) specifically our air hostess, darting to her seat at the back of the plane, where she quickly buckled herself in and put her head down as if in prayer – that’s when we all started to worry a bit more as we had heard no more from the pilot and the staff were not talking or telling us anything.

As we came in to land (with a very audible sigh of relief from the passengers ;o), an ambulance and fire engine came up on the adjacent runway and kept pace with us all the way to our parking space (our original starting point!!). 

The captain then came over the loudspeaker telling us that they were going to “quickly try and fix the plane as a panel had come loose off our wing” and were advised to remain in our seats. Looking out of my window, I saw 3 technicians looking and pointing to above where I sat, and the one guy’s jaw literally dropped in amazement – we now had an inkling that this was definitely not a good thing to have happened.

After a couple of minutes, the captain again advised us that it would take more than 2 hours to fix the problem, and that we were to disembark and go back to the terminals where we would be met by a flight representative who would advise as what to do next.

We all grabbed our hand luggage (back in the good old days that you could still take hand luggage on board of course ;o) and left the plane.  When we all saw the damage to the plane, we all grabbed our camera’s and tried to take pictures of the hole above the engine, however a burly security guard managed to stop most of us by shoving a file in front of our camera’s – one of our ladies did however get to take this pic.....

So, it was back on the bus again – and we were dropped off at International arrivals, where we all stood around looking quite stupid and shaken. All the staff within the arrivals terminal knew nothing about us, and the passport control tellers even told a couple of us to go through passport control. Finally after about 6 people lost their sense of humour with the available staff, one of them advised us to return to the tarmac and wait there as they might have dropped us off at the wrong doors – so it was off outside again to wait for another 10 or so minutes.  By this time, it was approaching 1:15 pm and people were starting to get quite rattled.

At this stage of the story I would just like to tell you about our collective intuitions and guardian angels:-  My uncle had just passed away (2 days previously) and during his life, he had been a pilot for JIA, and when I had prayed to God the day before, I had asked for a sign that my uncle was no longer in pain & that he was at peace. The sign that I asked for was to see an air plane – now we live in an area that is a flight route, so we normally see approx. 20 planes a day, but this day – I saw none. However, once we had landed I had this bizarre feeling that my uncle had saved his message for me, by helping us through our ordeal.

Two other ladies recounted how they had really dawdled about packing as if they weren’t going anywhere, one other forgot her passport, and another even overslept which for her was strange as that is one thing she never does.

Two things came out of our conversations and one was that if it had not been for the cat on the runway, the panel would have fallen off the plane at a higher altitude and no-one would have noticed until it was maybe a problem en-route or on landing in Namibia.

The second, was that our collective “funny feelings and intuitions” had proved us right – our angels were looking after us that day.

But our tale does not end here….

By the time a representative (Mimi ) met us outside on the tarmac to take us back to International Departures, one of our ladies had contacted 702 Radio and had asked them to investigate, another had called her previous boss to see if we could use his plane, and yet another was trying to get hold of a biggie within the company to see if they could assist us.

Mimi was very helpful and was in constant contact with SAX and even told them that the passengers were not keen to go back onto the same plane. We were then advised that we were to be taken to a restaurant for lunch, and ended up at “Ikaya” – a self-service food station for “light refreshments”.  We were all told by the staff that as we were from flight 170x that we were not allowed any alcohol (even when one of our ladies tried to get a dinky bottle of wine from the fridges for her nerves…).  Out of the 30 passengers, about 10 were told different stories by the Ikaya staff as to what we were allowed – no hot dishes, but two ended up with plates of chicken and vegetables?; some of us were allowed chocolates, others not? and to top it all 2 of our ladies got food poisoning from their chicken “tuna tasting” mayo sandwiches.

Once we had all sat down with our various sarmies, yoghurts and pies, Mimi got a call to say another plane was ready to take us to Namibia, so it was drop what we had and dash back off to the departure lounge! Back on the bus, Mimi did roll call and discovered a few missing – she then went back into the airport – the missing passengers were apparently at another gate, 1 up from the one we went out and were arguing with personnel to let them through to their bus. So another of the passengers went back into the airport to find Mimi.

It was now 2:30 pm and the bus dropped us off at another plane where we were then told by the crew that they had been waiting for us since 1:30 pm but that no-one knew where we were????

Anyway, they promised us a safe trip – and they kept their word.

On arrival in Walvis Bay, we all traipsed through passport control and one-by-one collected our belongings, but lo and behold – there were 3 bags missing! (one of the bags belonged to our boss, the other to the organiser of the trip, and the 3rd to our tea lady!)

Our tour operator in Walvis arranged for all the necessary lost documents to be filled out and it was at 5:10 pm that we finally started our journey to Swakopmund. So much for our relaxing lunch at the Lighthouse restaurant, afternoon at leisure and sun downer drinks in the desert that had been planned!

Arriving at the Swakopmund Hotel, we were given 15 minutes to check in, grab a jacket and get back in our mini-busses and it was off to the desert!

What a sight – candles in brown paper bags were circled around a fire, food and drink tables and a tent. Inside the tent, cushions had been thrown around low round tables, and in one of the corners, a 4-way hubbly-bubbly had been set up.  We had a fantastic dinner and danced around in the desert enjoying our renewal of life!

The following day was spent in the desert – parasailing off the back of a Hilux bakkie; sand boarding, 4x4, quad biking and Rhino driving in the dunes; fantastic fun – felt like a bunch of kids again!

By this time, the three ladies who’s luggage had “disappeared” were sharing wardrobes with the rest of us, and by Monday night 2 of the suitcases had been found in Johannesburg and flown through to Walvis Bay – both had been rifled through, the locks broken and the secure “shrink wrap” taken off – although nothing was missing.

702 had also called us back to say that SAX denied that anything happened to our plane and that we had left at the correct time – at the time of me writing this article, our boss and a couple of the ladies were to meet with some of the SAX management staff to ascertain exactly what the situation is.

Monday night we went on a restaurant crawl – starters at one restaurant, then off to another for main course, then to a night club/pub for desert – that was great and at least got a good look at the town – Swakopmund is really beautiful.

Tuesday morning, my roomie and I were up at 6 am to pack and get ready for breakfast – completely forgetting that Namibia was on daylight savings time – so we were downstairs and ready to go, an hour before anyone else – we even offered to make the hotel staff breakfast cos we were up so early! Anyway, then it was off to Walvis Bay for a dolphin cruise around the harbour – and much to our delight, we had visits on board by no less than 3 seals – all very friendly (however, some of the ladies were a little scared of them ;o)

Our return journey to JIA was uneventful – although the flight had been delayed again (but only by 15 minutes) so we arrived in Johannesburg at 5 pm that afternoon. The 3rd piece of luggage had been found by this time – or should we say what was left of it! – the clothes were full of grease fingerprints and all the shoes and valuables had been taken out of the luggage – so much for shrink wrapping and locks?

So, our desert experience was short in the end, but if our guardian angels had not been with us on the outbound flight, our journey’s would have been even shorter!

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Bevskins xxx !!!

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