Mark

Give this lot a wide berth they are the pits.The most useless,lazy and rude crews you will ever meet.Most South Africans will never travel with them and use BA or Air namibia.We usually go with KLM who are excellent but for flight timings used these cowboys in March.Never again.They turned the seat belt signs on over Spain and left them on until Cape Town.The crew then disappeared for the night leaving no one in the cabin.Not very safe.Dont bother complaining because they never reply to them.
The aircraft are Airbus A340-600 with good legroom and multi channel movies etc and,when they can be bothered to turn them on,out board cameras which are interesting.Oh and the food is awful.
I would suggest you consider travelling with BA...miles better

That's a shame you had such bad experience with them, Paully. I've flown with SAA many a time (I used to live there and my parents still do), and have had really great flights. I've also flown in Economy, Premium Economy and Business class and still couldn't fault them on anything.

The seat pitch seemed to be better than BA (my brother hates BA, incidentally!) but I think Virgin are the best for the South African route - my brother swears by them. Unfortunately for me, as Manchester is my nearest airport, Virgin isn't an option unless I fly to Heathrow first. We flew with Qatar in December 2005 and they were great going out but appalling coming back - looks like all airlines are a gamble though!