South African Airways Reviews

The flight is not operating, and yet with only 2 weeks to go, SAA have sent me no communication to say that it is, or is not, operating. Their call centres are shut, and via social media and email, I have been told that no refund is available. This is not legal, as the service provided has not been delivered. COVID19 is causing mayhem for everyone and everything, yet the response from SAA is the worst that I have experienced by a mile. Book with someone else, or risk losing your money.

South African Airways nor Justfly.com gave a damn. But the credit card company did. They refunded my full amount. My experience is to get the credit card company involved with your refund.

I booked an upcoming flight. I had to cancelled because of the covid 19 craze. After being on the phone for 45 mins, someone answered. Two days later I found out from the ticket they put in the wrong date. I called back to get the date right and these crooks are charging me extra $300 to change date on something which is not my fault even though flight is scheduled to leave months from now. Very dishonest people and money hungry folks. This will be first and last time I will use South African Airways. Fraudulent and inhumane of this airline during this difficult times. I don't recommend using them.

It's not a review of a flight but about customer care before the flight. SAA canceled my flight, bought two weeks before. Considering it was a multi-track flight (6 flights) I booked all the seats, but after the cancellation of two of these, they erased all the booking seats. I asked to proceed to re-book the seats for free, because I have already paid for them. I contacted the customer care on Twitter and one operator was good and wrote me he/she rebooked all the 4 SAA flights. After 3 days the seats seems not yet booked and I'm trying again to have an answer from them on twitter, without success. I'm really disappointed because my expectation, considering they canceled my flight, is to have more customer attention about a simply request like the one of booking a seat.

The worse airline I have ever used. I flew on SSA on December 6, 2019 from Washington to Accra, Ghana. One of the air hostesses was very rude and aggressive to customers. She insulted one customer that if she pass by and see his leg in the aisle, she will walk over it. She was screaming at this poor guy, her finger right in his face and even wanted to poke his eyes. Yes everything was very disgusting and horrifying. Customers couldn’t believe that actions coming from an air hostess. I got to Accra, one of my luggage tile had broken and all my four cell phones I bought to give to my family as gift were not working. How come, not one but all wouldn’t turn on after hours of been charged. They have damaged all my electronics. Useless airline, would never recommend. Please stay away.

My partner and I decided to fly business class from Melbourne to Cape Town. We paid over $4100 AUD. My partner had flown SAA over 15 times in the past 20 years. He said that the service had been declining. So we decided maybe business class would be better service, boy were we wrong. Our flight to Cape Town, 2 suitcases were lost. I was without any clothes or personal items for 2 days. We lined up at Joburg and Cape Town over 1 hour each time for us to be sent away and that staff will call us in a few hours. We didn’t hear back the following day so decided to call. Was on hold for over 1 hour before hanging up. Rang the next day and they said that they were still investigating. We got a call the next day saying our bags had been found and that they would deliver our bags after lunch as they had heaps of bags to drop off before.

My family and I were suppose to travel to Dar es Salaam with SAA back in December. My wife sent a cancellation enquiry via the website to enquire what the fees would be to cancel or move the flight as we were unable to make the flight due to passport issues. She received no response from the web help desk. Today I contacted your service centre to make the same enquiry and was told that the flight has been cancelled. This was not the instruction online. We have not received any confirmation of cancellation or the information we requested - which was the fees associated with a cancellation and/ or postponement of the flight. We would like to postpone the flight to later next year. There has been no feedback whatsoever or assistance in solving this issue.

We flew from JHB to EL on 1st January and returned from CT to JHB on 11th January. We were worried about the flights with all the negative reports. However, we received great service from when we checked in to when we collected our bags.

I had problem using a Priceline app on my phone and ended up booking a duplicate ticket for a friend travelling to Lagos, Nigeria. Priceline recognized this to be a duplicate ticket right away and sent me an email. After several calls to Priceline becasue I missed their deadline, they were willing to refund the money if SAA will cancel the ticket. SAA flatly refused on the grounds that the 4th leg of the second ticket had a slight difference in the departure time from Lagos to Accra. I disputed the charge and my credit card company also called them and they still will not cancel the ticket!!!! This is my first time buying a ticket for a flight on South African Airways and it will be the last!!!!

From start to finish the worst experience I've ever had flying or even on the ground. Rude, dismissive, arrogant, dirty planes, very poor quality of service. And the benign way that they handled a serious complaint from me, tells me why South African Airlines is the worst airline I have ever flown. I flew business class.