LIFT Airline Flight GE209: We were on-board the three hour delayed Joburg to Durban flight. Oh what a mess!
Chaotic. Messy. Weird.
That’s probably the best and kindest adjectives one may use to describe the experience with LIFT Airline after midday on Thursday.
It was quite the sh** show and I am confident enough to call it thus as I exclaimed this countless times in the over three hours delay we suffered at OR Tambo International Airport.
Besides, LIFT knows this as well and they have already awarded everyone from at least four or five, maybe even six flights, which were delayed for no less than three hours between Thursday afternoon and Thursday night.
“LIFT COMPENSATION: On behalf of LIFT, we would like to apologise for the inconvenience caused by the delay of your flight GE209 on 27OCT.
“As a token of our sincere apologies, we will credit your LIFT wallet with R450 which will reflect within the next 72 hours”.
In this economy, no company offers such a “sweetener”, but LIFT had to because of the monumental scale of their blunder, which to be fair, could have happened to any other airline.
Safety first. You bet.
So how did the mess happen?
Simple, the Joburg-Durban 12pm flight experienced technical difficulties during its scheduled flight check.
It was a packed flight with probably 200 people or so.
I was seated in Row 5, two seats behind the champagne and wine guzzling premium seat guys in the first three rows.
We boarded a little late, probably just after 12pm and we were seated in the plane.
Technical air staff in reflector vests were pretty visible, jumping in and out of the plane several times.
Then the pilot came over the intercom system at about 12.15pm and announced technical issues with the flight.
Moments later, he came on again and said the issue likely needed another 45 minutes to fix.
The groans, the moans and the sighs of exasperation rang through the aircraft.
One lady, who was travelling to Margate from King Shaka Airport was defeated.
Her shuttle service to Margate, from King Shaka, which she had paid a pretty penny for, would be leaving her due to the flight delay.
In other words – money down the drain.
Ouch, sorry…
While we waited, cabin crew offered some water to those who cared for some as they could clearly see people were unhappy.
Some passengers spoke of regret about going for the R200 and R300 savings with an unknown, new and untested airline – to them.
To be fair, I had used LIFT before on a flight to Cape Town with my fiancé last September and there were no hiccups and hurdles.
Anyway, the clock ticked on, and on, and on, and on.
At this point, as a coping mechanism you start talking tales of your longest flight delay ever.
For me, this wasn’t it. My longest flight delay was in 2012, when I was a young Cadet trainee reporter.
The company had booked us a 6am flight to Durban from Cape Town, in the formerly green and now defunct airline.
Long story short, we landed in Durban around 4pm.
Sigh.
Back to LIFT.
At 1pm the pilot came back through the speaker system and this time, he had bad news.
The maintenance issue, whatever it was, could not be fixed in the 45 minutes and they had to get all of us - about 200 of us or so - off the GE209 plane which was parked at D1, and we were instructed to go to D7, on Flight GE153.
They were about to make the Durban problem, a Cape Town problem.
MUSICAL CHAIRS
This is when the musical chairs began.
LIFT decided to swap the aircrafts around, adding Joburg-Cape Town route into the mix.
Remember, LIFT had just launched three daily flights between Durban and Joburg on Wednesday, and the aircraft that is to spearhead this initiative has now inexplicably failed on its second flight of the day on day two of a new route.
Disaster.
Alarm bells must have rang out at HQ and operations likely made the choice to play musical chairs, which would then subsequently affect numerous flights in the Joburg-Cape Town and Durban-Joburg route.
Here’s how and some of these timestamps are totally hypothetical.
The three hour delay of the 12pm Joburg-Durban flight and subsequent swap with the 2pm Joburg-Cape Town flight, caused delays for the 4pm Durban-Joburg flight, which caused further delays for the final Joburg-Durban 8pm flight.
Meanwhile, the 2pm Joburg-Cape Town flight which had been delayed way past 6pm, would have a similar domino effect too.
“Hi there, the delay was caused as a result of aircraft rotational changes and we are extremely sorry for the inconvenience and frustration caused. We can only imagine the level of displeasure you are feeling toward the service provided,” LIFT admitted on Twitter.
I am no aviation expert, so I have no idea what exactly LIFT was supposed to do to contain and or resolve the problem sooner, more efficiently.
Of course if they had a few Boeings at the hangars at OR Tambo, that would also half solve the problem, but we know aircrafts are expensive and they aren't bought like bread at UncleJoni’s tuck shop.
Perhaps earlier checks to the aircraft could help.
But I can say that during times of strife, emotions are high, but communication and getting a sense of preparedness helps a great deal.
We can only hope LIFT learns from the terrible experience, recovers and improves accordingly for the public’s sake, because without the planes with the fruity bright orange livery, bright green and British liveries, players in the space are hard to come by.
Do better, yellow ones.
IOL