Delaying your way
Chaotic Air Botswana is ‘ going your way’, but later!
The eve of Sunday 3rd December turned out to be one of my worst travel experiences, not only frustrating but indicting on our national airline service, Air Botswana as it has now normalized contemptible operations.
Along with five fellow citizens, as Botswana Guardian Reporter I was travelling to Johannesburg, South Africa to attend a meeting which comprised of participants from eight southern African countries. Everyone arrived at the airport on time and went through all the necessary procedures of checking- in at least an hour earlier than the departure time, which was scheduled at 1745 hours.
But this time, as we were checking- in, I noticed that the system seemed to be faulty as two crew members were seemingly busy in that area. Eventually, the system resumed functioning and all the passengers were assisted in less than one hour. Everyone proceeded to the waiting room with the knowledge that boarding of BP206 commences at 1710hours. Little did we know that the time will be rescheduled further by an hour and 30 minutes? I have always been indifferent in the way some local travelers express their frustrations about Air Botswana service. I felt people are impatient: I was wrong. I now felt the pain of being delayed without any concrete reason, officials did not even bother to inform passengers the cause of delay; as much as the explanation was not going to speed up the time, but it would be a little bit comforting to understand why some things seem to be the way they are. I felt pity for those who were supposed to connect to international flights in the next two hours. All of them were disgruntled and only hoped for a miracle to catch their flights in Johannesburg.
The interesting thing about time is its consistency, finally it was 1820hours. That is when the announcement was made informing passengers to start boarding, it was a sigh moment for everyone as they all stood up and proceeded to the gate B, and finally started boarding one by one, passing through all the security check points, presenting our passports and with boarding passes everyone was granted access without any interrogations. Just when we thought everyone was settled, there was a bit of confusion in front of me, three passengers were arguing about the seat. It appears one passenger was given the boarding pass in the name of another passenger. The passenger just received the boarding pass and did not recheck her names because spelling of names is the last thing one could worry about when somebody is confirming it in the passport, the name written on passport is correct so no worries about spellings printed out after scanning the passport.
That meant one seat was allocated twice. That was strange, the other passenger also stood there demanding her seat which was taken by another passenger with a wrong boarding pass and this was when the officials’ intervention was required. That became the most annoying thing to passengers as they had to be delayed by further 40 minutes for the issue to be addressed. One of the passengers was considered a security threat and was chucked out from the flight even though it wasb not her fault to have a duplicate boarding pass, but the officials’. The flight took off at 1920hours and landed at OR Tambo International airport at around 2010 hours.
On the return journey, five days later, the same passengers thought they have recovered from last time’s frustrations but were wrong. The same BP206 was still holding on to its tradition of delay. The 1545 flight took off at 1700 hours and landed in Gaborone at 1810.