Today, I was justifiably excited!!!
I had half a day off work and planned to fly to Hong Kong in the afternoon. Â We rocked up at the airport to board the 2pm KA991, checked in, got into the lounge and waited. Â As usual the muppets at American Express Travel (not afraid to name names on this blog) had not sent through my frequent flyer details, so we were way down the back of the bus in a crappy seat. Â Not off to a good start.
We knew something was amiss, when the cabin lighting kept switching on and off and the engines kept powering up and down. Â After 30 minutes of this, with no announcements, captain comes on and tells us we are having “electrical problems” duh. Â We sit on the plane and wait, for another hour.
Why were we waiting for so long when we had already been told the plane would not be flying to Hong Kong without repairs I hear you asking? Â Because some, numpty in the airport had decided to not let us back off the aircraft as we needed to go through the airport beurocracy and mountains of paperwork in order to be let back off the plane, strangely enough, we were only going airside and not back into China, but forms had to be filled in and probably chopped. Â This took one hour. Â Now that the eyes of the world are on South Africa, no one in China gives a shit, so it’s back to business as usual.
We figured we would try and get onto a different flight, however by the time we got off the plane there was already a scrum of people screaming at two harried staff at the gate, so we figured as “premium” clientele we would simply go off to the lounge where everything would be handled in a courteous, efficient and competent manner. 
At the lounge, we knew we were in for another great moment in Chinese customer service.  At the lounge there were a total of four staff, however there was only one that was doing any work.  It seems that even though China has embraced capitalism in a big sweaty bear hug, some vestiges of communism, such as full employment are still hard to let go.  We were greeted  at the door and I explained our dilemma and how we would like to get onto a new flight, “business or first” the lady says to me, so I says “so long as we don’t have to pay, I’ll happily fly either”, “business or first” she says again…..at this point it dawned on me that this quite possibly was the only words / English phrase she knows.  I switch over to Mandarin, well broken Mandarin, but still enough for her to understand what we want, she directs us to the large queue in front of the only person doing anything…great!
Waiting in the queue, we hear the guy in front of us get told that he can get re-booked onto a different flight, but he has to go back…..way back to the check-in counter to get his boarding pass, WTF!!! Â This involves a 2 kilometre walk and a short train ride! Â Naturally he’s a little bit upset about this and wonders why this a). cant be done in the lounge or b). why can’t it be done at the gate. Â After about 10 minutes of deliberation, a near riot by people in the line and lots of loud suggestions from the crowd of PASSENGERS that this CAN in fact be done at the gate, said gentleman went off to the gate to pick up his boarding pass. Â At this point we decide to stay with our original flight and wander into the lounge.
I think I must have had one foot inside the threshold of the lounge when we were pretty much crash tackled and told we were not allowed in as we didn’t have a “lounge invitation”. Â I explained that we had already been in and therefore had already surrendered our invitation. Â We are then told to “get out” , at this point….I lost my temper and began explaining in a loud clear voice why I was allowed in the lounge, some would say I was shouting, Tanya told me to calm down, but I feel loud clear English often works well. Â In the end we make the door bitch go out and start going through every single lounge invitation in the box to find ours, it was fun for 5 minutes, but happily I had an old lounge invitation from a trip to Taipei that I didn’t use, slapped this down on the desk and went in for a relaxing and cleansing ale.
The proper way to handle the above situation would have been as follows….
Door Bitch : “Sir, may I see your lounge pass”
Me: “Terribly sorry, but you relieved me of it when I was here previously”
Door Bitch: “Oh, I very humbly apologise, can I just check your boarding pass”
Door Bitch : “Thankyou so much for your kind patronage of our airline, I see you are a frequent flyer. Â We have a special area in the lounge for you, would you like a flute of Mumms, a foot massage and a plate of swan and cucumber sandwiches?”
See, customer service isn’t that hard. Â After waiting around for another hour, we eventually took off a full 3 hours later.
Funnily enough, they are better than Air China…..well, relatively better.
