Sunday, December 02, 2007
Stuck in Senegal
Returning from Canada at the beginning of November, I changed travel plans to stay a few extra days to meet with my new boss. Instead of going through Frankfurt, the plan was to fly to New York then fly direct to Johannesburg with a fuel stop in Dakar, Senegal--you don't get off...it's 45 minutes to change crew, re-cater the flight and fuel up the plane. I have done that flight before and it generally is alright because it saves 8-10 hours layover in Europe. Well, great plan but it didn't turn out that well. We got to Dakar alright, but when we went to take off again to leave for Joburg, the pilot came on and said there was a mechanical problem and he was going to shut off the engines and all systems to try to re-boot the thing and if that didn't work we would have to deplane while it was fixed. Rebooting didn't work and we all got off. That was the start of almost 48 hours of fairly stressful time in Dakar Senegal, with no real understanding when we would be getting out. It was the second back up to a hydraulic something or other related to controlling the rudder...so while not critical, it could become so if there were a failure or two on the original system.
So around 200 people got off the plane and sat in the business lounge until almost lunch time (we landed around dawn). We finally got loaded on buses to go to a hotel for lunch thinking it might be possible that we would take off at 4pm. Turns out pilots and airline crew are also "tourists". Here is a picture of a pilot from our plane making memories of the experience.
It was difficult to know what to expect, especially since this was the view for muchn of the way to the hotel we were going to for lunch. (click to enlarge)
We got to the hotel and had a pleasant lunch. From there we hung around the hotel for several more hours. Doesn't seem that bad except we had already flown almost 10 hours, they hadn't taken our luggage off, and no one really knew what was going on. And even better, we were told there were absolutely no hotel rooms anywhere in Dakar due to several conferences so we all just hung around the hotel all day, for about 11 hours. Under different circumstances, it could have been alright. But hanging out in this environment with clothes you've worn for 2 days (keeping in mind that it's cold in Canada in November so I had long pants and sleeves on) at that point, without showers etc...not so much.
We hung around the hotel, Le Meridian, until 11pm. Oh, and by the way, South African Air decided providing water to people stranded due to their maintenance problem was not their problem, and the hotel was charging people $6 for a 500ml bottle of water. Nice. So we went back to the airport and hung out in the lounge again with the expectation that the flight would be leaving at 4am--almost 24 hours from when we landed. People were lying all over the place...there were 200 people. Well, 4am came and went and no call to board came. Some of us went down to the gate area to find out what was going on. The ground manager had no idea what the plan was or when we might be getting out of there. People started losing it and at one point, one young woman from Oakland California got belligerent and started yelling that she needed to get out of there (like no on eelse had anywhere to be). When he wouldn't listen to her, she go nutty and said, "Fine then, I'm a terrorist and I'm going to blow up the plane!" She said it four times. Nice. She was on a plane that had left New York City. Hello!?!?!? Insenstive much?? Anyway, turns out SAA had a flight gong through with 10 seats and Delta also had a flight to Joburg and we could have 20 of those. Turns out Delta actually had almost 100 seats but wouldn't let SAA have more than 20 because they didn't have catering for all of them. I personally was willing to buy a sandwich and some water before I boarded but Delta was being pissy. I will be writing them a letter as well. Anyway, the pilot finally came around 6am to explain things. unfortuately, no one told half the people some of whom were in another lounge, so they didn't hear all of the stuff. They never had the chance to get on the potential list to go on the first 30 seats. Nuts man. There were a few dozen people on the flight coming to SA for dedication of a Jehvah's Witness centre and several others were on booked safari tours etc. who were missing days of their trip. Stupid thing was, the idiot girl from Oakland who said she was a terrorist, got one of the seats out. Brutal.
Things finally started coming together as they got us breakfast in the restaurant, got us hotel rooms and got us out luggage. Midmorning we got on buses to go to the hotels. The hotel was a bit old and dodgy (think Fort Lauderdale or Daytona, circa, 1973) but it was paradise after the previous 24 hours. Amazingly, people started to calm down and just go with it. Amazing what a shower and a bed will do for your disposition. I spent the day on calls then hung out at the pool for little bit. Not bad for me since I really didn't have to be anywhere, unlike the tourists trying to get to SA. Here is the view the second day:
We had dinner that ended with the electricity at the hotel going off and finally left the hotel at 10pm to head back to the airport with the expectation that the flight would finally be leaving at 1am. That would be abut 19 hours after landing. We finally boarded and took off around 4am...about 48 hours after landing. Pretty odd experience. I didn't *have* to be anywhere so I wasn't as flipped out as many people understandably were but it was honestly, a terrible couple of days illustrating how ill prepared South African Airlines was in handling situations like that. And I know they learned little to nothing in being able to deal with it better the next time.
So around 200 people got off the plane and sat in the business lounge until almost lunch time (we landed around dawn). We finally got loaded on buses to go to a hotel for lunch thinking it might be possible that we would take off at 4pm. Turns out pilots and airline crew are also "tourists". Here is a picture of a pilot from our plane making memories of the experience.
It was difficult to know what to expect, especially since this was the view for muchn of the way to the hotel we were going to for lunch. (click to enlarge)
We got to the hotel and had a pleasant lunch. From there we hung around the hotel for several more hours. Doesn't seem that bad except we had already flown almost 10 hours, they hadn't taken our luggage off, and no one really knew what was going on. And even better, we were told there were absolutely no hotel rooms anywhere in Dakar due to several conferences so we all just hung around the hotel all day, for about 11 hours. Under different circumstances, it could have been alright. But hanging out in this environment with clothes you've worn for 2 days (keeping in mind that it's cold in Canada in November so I had long pants and sleeves on) at that point, without showers etc...not so much.
We hung around the hotel, Le Meridian, until 11pm. Oh, and by the way, South African Air decided providing water to people stranded due to their maintenance problem was not their problem, and the hotel was charging people $6 for a 500ml bottle of water. Nice. So we went back to the airport and hung out in the lounge again with the expectation that the flight would be leaving at 4am--almost 24 hours from when we landed. People were lying all over the place...there were 200 people. Well, 4am came and went and no call to board came. Some of us went down to the gate area to find out what was going on. The ground manager had no idea what the plan was or when we might be getting out of there. People started losing it and at one point, one young woman from Oakland California got belligerent and started yelling that she needed to get out of there (like no on eelse had anywhere to be). When he wouldn't listen to her, she go nutty and said, "Fine then, I'm a terrorist and I'm going to blow up the plane!" She said it four times. Nice. She was on a plane that had left New York City. Hello!?!?!? Insenstive much?? Anyway, turns out SAA had a flight gong through with 10 seats and Delta also had a flight to Joburg and we could have 20 of those. Turns out Delta actually had almost 100 seats but wouldn't let SAA have more than 20 because they didn't have catering for all of them. I personally was willing to buy a sandwich and some water before I boarded but Delta was being pissy. I will be writing them a letter as well. Anyway, the pilot finally came around 6am to explain things. unfortuately, no one told half the people some of whom were in another lounge, so they didn't hear all of the stuff. They never had the chance to get on the potential list to go on the first 30 seats. Nuts man. There were a few dozen people on the flight coming to SA for dedication of a Jehvah's Witness centre and several others were on booked safari tours etc. who were missing days of their trip. Stupid thing was, the idiot girl from Oakland who said she was a terrorist, got one of the seats out. Brutal.
Things finally started coming together as they got us breakfast in the restaurant, got us hotel rooms and got us out luggage. Midmorning we got on buses to go to the hotels. The hotel was a bit old and dodgy (think Fort Lauderdale or Daytona, circa, 1973) but it was paradise after the previous 24 hours. Amazingly, people started to calm down and just go with it. Amazing what a shower and a bed will do for your disposition. I spent the day on calls then hung out at the pool for little bit. Not bad for me since I really didn't have to be anywhere, unlike the tourists trying to get to SA. Here is the view the second day:
We had dinner that ended with the electricity at the hotel going off and finally left the hotel at 10pm to head back to the airport with the expectation that the flight would finally be leaving at 1am. That would be abut 19 hours after landing. We finally boarded and took off around 4am...about 48 hours after landing. Pretty odd experience. I didn't *have* to be anywhere so I wasn't as flipped out as many people understandably were but it was honestly, a terrible couple of days illustrating how ill prepared South African Airlines was in handling situations like that. And I know they learned little to nothing in being able to deal with it better the next time.
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