My brother came on business from Paris. He was due to leave to go back to Paris on an SAA flight (details provided).
My husband dropped him at the airport in time for check-in.
No delay was announced. The travellers went on board, the plane left its parking space, but then the crew discovered that there was a failure of the computer system linked with the flaps.
The plane went back to its parking space and the passengers waited until 12.15am, given nothing - no dinner, no drinks. They could get water out of the toilet rack!
My brother rang us at about 11.15pm to ask whether we would be able to fetch him if necessary, and we said yes. But we heard no further news and assumed that the plane had eventually left.
At about 12.15am the passengers were asked to disembark and were put in a business class lounge that could not accommodate 200 passengers of an Airbus A340, so not everyone had a seat. The lucky travellers were then allowed to have non-alcoholic drinks from the bar with chips and peanuts as dinner.
At 6am it was announced that they would leave at 10am.
There was no question of being put up in a hotel or being allowed to go home. At 8.30am they left the lounge to go and queue to get another boarding pass.
They went on board and the plane did not leave at 10 as planned but only an hour later, as they then had to wait for some transit passengers from somewhere!
A breakfast they called brunch was served at noon. At that point, my brother along with most of the other passengers had not had any food for 24 hours. Dinner was only served at 8pm and they landed in Paris at about 9.50pm.
To add insult to injury, the captain asked the passengers "not to harass the hostesses with questions" as they knew nothing and were too busy.
I ask myself how near we are from human rights violation. What right does SAA has to detain passengers in appalling conditions without food and not allow them to go home? Would they have called it "air rage" if some people had left the building to go home ?
Marie-France Ralfe, Saxonwold
Robyn Chalmers SAA head: group corporate affairs responds
We apologise for the inconvenience caused due to the delay of Flight SA272 from Johannesburg to Paris, scheduled to depart at 7.45pm on Friday October 26 .
South African Airways puts the safety of our passengers first.
Our technicians believed that the fault could be rectified before departure, which was why passengers remained on board.
When it became clear that the fault could not be rectified on the ramp, the flight had to be delayed until the following morning and passengers disembarked. The disembarking and re-embarking of passengers can further delay the departure of a flight, so if the technicians believe there is a reasonable chance of rectifying a fault, the procedure is for passengers to remain on board.
We could not find hotel accommodation for everyone, as an aircraft from another airline had been grounded earlier in the evening.
Many customers were put up in our business class lounge.
Before customers leave for their homes or the hotel, they are given the choice of either collecting their baggage, or we store it on their behalf.
On this particular instance we stored lots of bags and even employed extra security to look after the many bags left in our care.
Our pilots are professionals. We have investigated this matter and are assured that our flight deck crew on SA272 on October 27 did not make any such announcement, nor did they communicate in this manner.
