Over South Africa

You join me traversing South Africa. Bottom left to top right. I’m on a teeny tiny plane, and there’s “lots of weather all over South Africa”, according to the captain.

That’s not good, because we’re also very much all over South Africa.

It has been unpleasantly bouncy so far.

The inflight magazine contains the usual plethora of advertorials: guest houses and safari lodges dominate, but there was a beautiful juxtaposition of an industrial rock crushing equipment supplier across the page from a laser tooth whitening service.

To avoid disappointment (and possibly a lot of pain), please make sure you ring the correct number.

In the same magazine, there’s the usual puff piece about the airline you’re on, and how they’re better than the other airlines. They advertise some of those differences as being “more smiles”, which I’m fairly sure aren’t objectively quantifiable SI units, and the opportunity to “say goodbye to rigid itineraries”.

Really?

Is it just me that quite likes the idea of a rigid itinerary when booking travel tickets? I can’t imagine that it is. It’s literally one of the most important things that I’m after.

For example, I’m hopeful that my accommodation for this evening is fairly rigidly booked. It really wouldn’t be helpful for them to be flexible enough to be “just a day out”.

Could you maybe pop back tomorrow please, Sir?

We seem to have finally hit some clean air, over what I’m guessing is the southern Free State. This means that I can stop thinking about flight safety statistics and engineering tolerances as mind-over-matter means of combatting the mentally challenging effects of the turbulence.

Aaand it’s back already. That didn’t last long. Quite bad. Tumble drier on a rollercoaster stuff, if you remember that post about the Christchurch earthquake that I can’t link to right now because I’m 37,000 feet up in the air. (Updated once safely on the ground.)

Really bad now. Not nice. Gasps and exclamations from passengers. I’m being stoic. Who would be listening anyway?

We’re turning. The pilots have had enough. Not back to Cape Town, but presumably looking for a bit of a clearer way around the bumpy stuff. Thank you.

Ok. About an hour to go. Agricultural landscape giving way to mining and industry beneath me.

Time to relax with some chilled electronica (it’s M83 in case you were wondering), stop thinking about that other stuff. and plan those first few shots again.

Looks like if you’re reading this, we made it.

Or at least my phone did.

Don’t joke

Don’t joke about crazy journeys.

I once did that once (it was yesterday) and it almost backfired.

But I don’t have editing time right now: I’ll get to that should I survive my flight back into severely stormy Cape Town this evening.
It could be a crazy journey.
But it would take a bit to beat this one…

Now I don’t believe in tempting fate and all that nonsense, but if I were to believe in it, I’d consider that those lines above would be a really good way of doing it.

The descent into Cape Town last night was distinctly unpretty. In fact, it was a horror show. Bumpy, shaky, loud: wholly unpleasant. There were regular gasps and screams from the length of the cabin as we were chucked around over the Winelands. A member of the cabin crew was knocked clean off her feet. Another was throwing up near the back of the plane. The elderly Muslim gentleman sitting next to me grabbed my arm out of sheer terror. Twice.

Now, I have complete faith in the tolerances and the engineering that go into building passenger aircraft, and also in the tensile strength of the materials involved, but even I had to continually remind myself of these things as we bounced our way down into the Mother City.

When we did make it down onto the runway, it was with a big bang. And when we finally made it to a full stop, my neighbour gently whispered “Thank Allah” under his breath, which I thought was a little unkind given the best efforts of the well-trained pilots. But then I vaguely recalled that the First Officer had introduced himself as Allah van Zyl prior to departure, so I guess that’s maybe what he was thinking.

Even when we were sitting safely on the tarmac awaiting the stairs to take us out into the cold evening, the plane was still bumping around, being buffeted by the wind which was gusting to 100kph.

The dash to the terminal was fun, with horizontal rain, lost hats, mild swearing and relieved laughter filling the air.

Nastiest 15 minutes of my flying life? Probably. I really didn’t enjoy it.

Props (no pun intended) then to Captain Jesus Schoeman* and Big A the First Officer for getting us down safely.

I have no air travel planned for the foreseeable future.

 

* possibly a made-up name.