South African Airways

JNB-CPT-JNB in Economy. SAA does not treat affiliated Star Gold members as is customary with other airlines in the alliance. For SAA first come their own Voyager members. First leg on 737-800 aircraft old seats no priority boarding chaos on board since two seats where broken and delay of 45 mins without being informed or updated at all. Catering only started after 1 hour. Return on 340-600 aircraft again seating problems double seat assignments resulting in delay. Very disappointed with SAA.

LHR-JNB-LHR. Check in process very quick and through to lounge. Heathrow Star Alliance lounge very poor - dark lighting hard seats - felt like a waiting room at a train station. Very professional cabin crew nice choice of food and excellent wines on offer. Film choice very limited and not on a par with other carriers. Flight made up time and arrived on schedule. As one of the first flights virtually no queue at immigration and bags through quickly. Return flight also on time. Very professional "old school" CSD who personally came round the cabin shaking passengers hands and thanking them for flying SAA - a nice touch. Food and drinks very nice again. Found the lie flat seats a little hard and restrictive width wise. All in all a positive experience.

The aircraft was clearly very old cramped seats with extremely limited leg room. Drop down tvs overhead not seat back screens. Extremely old films overhead screens were just inches from my head and there was a warning on the back of the seat about this. Could not move my arms easily in order to eat my meal due to the lack of space. Unsmiling surly staff on the outbound flight (UK to Cape Town) better on the way back. Breakfast inedible. Uncomfortable flight with many people clearly unable to sleep. The overhead light would have disturbed other passengers so I couldn't read and with no proper in flight entertainment I simply sat in my seat for 11 hours bored out of my mind.

Had a wonderful experience on JFK-JNB in business class on the A340 lie flat seats - top notch all round from comfort to food to staff to entertainment.

JNB-LLW and NBO-JNB economy. First leg okay though food awful and staff abrupt. NBO-JNB was awful - check in staff rude one walking away mid conversation and not returning. What was originally a 2 hour delay became an 8 hour delay - we were kept poorly informed and provided only with juice/water but no proper food.

My thanks to airline retrieving wrapping and delivering luggage to me when it did not make a connecting flight out of Dulles - also to the ground staff at OR Tambo who were courteous and reassuring to all of us. The food on that flight was awful and I am not a fussy eater. The food was served at local time 15h00 less than two hours before touch-down at OR Tambo and quite ridiculous as a lunch - especially since it was about 8 hours after breakfast. The cabin was darkened until that time (15h00) even though it had been daylight for hours. Surely one does not expect an 8-hour sleep after breakfast when we had already had about 4 or 5 hours after leaving Washington. Most ridiculous the out of date video that played before touchdown was long and complicated and did not even mention Gautrain.

LHR-Cape Town return. Flight to Cape Town was excellent FAs could not have done more. Seat pitch a little short in flat bed position. Star Alliance lounge at LHR is very average. Return CPT to LHR service no more than efficient and not with a smile. Food average throughout. South African Airways lounge is poor as are refreshments on offer. Inflight entertainment is poor and old fashioned on A340-200.