Fly Mango to any destination at Durban rates!!!

Let me share with you the little tale of something I hope never happens to me.

My sister came to visit the other day from Durban. After a lovely weekend in Pretoria she packs her bags to head home to Durban on her Mango flight. She arrived at the airport on a Sunday afternoon, booked in and what not. Kisses goodbye and of she goes. With all the excitement after the weekend her head was somewhere else and she thinks her boarding gate is D2 when in fact it was D1. Of she goes to gate D2. The friendly lady at the gate tears her ticket and punches in her seat number. “Thank you Mam, enjoy your flight”. The flight attendant greets her at the plane, checks her ticket and directs her to her seat, right at the back of the plane. Down the isle she waddles past everyone. Surprise surprise when she gets to her seat, there is already someone in it.

Sister: “excuse me Sir I think you are in my seat”

Seat stealer guy: “Really? I am sure this is my seat” checks his ticket “Yes I am afraid this is my seat”

Sister: takes out her ticket “but I have the same seat number”

Seat stealer guy: “Mam your ticket says Durban this plane is going to Cape Town”

Sister: “Cape Town, Cape Town What?”

She grabs her stuff and hurries back up the isle to the flight attendant “where is this plane going” she confirms “Cape Town”. My sister runs out of the plane and realizes her boarding gate is D1, scheduled to leave at 5:10 pm. Luckily the flight was delayed. Eventually I am happy to say she got on the right plane and arrived in Durban thanks to seat stealer guy.

Now my question to you. How is it that no one realized she was boarding the wrong plane? Why after 2 people checked her ticket was she able to get on the flight to Cape Town? Why were they able to punch in her seat number when she boarded if someone was already in that seat? Surely the system warns you when you double book a seat or am I expecting too much? Does this mean I can book myself a flight to Durban and go to Argentina? I might get there with no luggage but whoop whoop at a fraction of the price!

Imagine if there was no one in her seat, she would have arrived in Cape Town on a Sunday evening in stead of Durban. What is up with this? What is going to happen with 2010 when people fly locally to attend games and they end up in the wrong location? With all the drug busts we have at the moment coming from SA it is evident that our airport security is laking in many ways. No wonder, as they can’t even make sure that passengers are boarding the flights to their booked destinations.

If this is our standard of local airport security I am sure there is a little more going on then coke landing up in the UK. They are not even able to get the basics right locally, if I was another country I wouldn’t trust anything coming from SA. You don’t even know if the passengers scheduled to arrive are the ones that will be getting of the plane. She could have gotten of the plane at Cape Town and no one would ever have known. Would she have been liable for getting on the wrong plane? Would they have booked her from Cape Town back to Durban at their cost or hers?

What is the airports responsibility with regards to this? And what is the passenger’s responsibility? Do they have to double check that we are in fact going to the destination of the plane we are boarding? Or do they only have to tear the ticket and smile? What do you think?