Cape Town Airport

Queues for International departures stretched from the ground floor through security to the Immigration departure Hall. Why? Just three of eighteen desks manned four long haul wide bodied departures at this time of day so maybe 1400 people departing within 20 minutes. Two flights were delayed because of this. Seems like inefficiency on Immigration's part as one airline rep said it happening all the time. Wake up Cape Town the African World cup is only just round the corner!

An excellent airport in all respects apart from limited catering facilities and one which has greatly improved over the thirty or so years I've been using it regularly. However I had an 'interesting' experience on Saturday night (24 SEP). Whilst waiting at the check- in to sort out a minor problem with my ticket I asked the lady if I could weigh myself on the baggage scale as I was curious to see how much weight I'd picked up on the last trip. My normal weight is between 64-66 kgs. You may imagine my surprise when it registered me as 47 kgs. I got on and off again with the same result! I told her jokingly that I would be happy to use that same scales with my wine laden overweight suitcase on my next trip. I then went to the next counter which showed my weight as 78 kgs (also twice.) A third and fourth one were correct. I do wonder if there is some sort of scam going on here as I find it hard to imagine that such a huge error could not have been picked up and addressed.

This was my first time in RSA and Cape Town was a good choice of entry. The building is spacious modern and light and I was through the busy and commendably thorough immigration section within 20 minutes which was impressive given the size of the queues. The only difficulty encountered was with the car park payment machines many of which seemed to be breaking down and which also accepted only a few values of notes resulting in long queues.