ACSA Passport control poor service

<p>On the 30th December, 2016 my son missed his flight on Emirates airlines to Washington Dulles in the United States at 1 pm in the afternoon due to the fact that the line at passport control was not split between SA passport holders and foreign passport holders and there was only 1 counter open which took a very long time to get the passengers through passport control. The results of this inefficient service is that he missed his flight and only got to the boarding gate when the flight had already pushed back for takeoff. This was a very stressful time for him as he is 20 years old and he had to be in the USA before the 3rd January as he will be studying there at a college in Virginia. He had to be escorted back out again and taken through customs again to be entered back into the country again. He called us and we had to go back to the airport. This resulted in us spending the rest of the day at the airport trying to get this sorted out. Emirates Airlines could not assist us as all the flights later that day and the following few days were fully booked. We had to contact the agent in America to assist us and they told us that all Emirates flights were fully booked till the 22 January 2017 and hat we had to pay a penalty due to him missing his flight. SAA could not assist us on their flight out at 9:30 pm as the first leg was available but from Accra to Washington was a problem. We tried several airlines but was unable to secure a flight. We even tried upgrading the ticket to business class but was not successful. Around 6 pm the agent in America could assist us with a flight via Germany on SAA as Emirates agreed to refund only a small portion of the ticket price. I had to pay an additional $1300 for his ticket to fly on SAA to Munich in Germany and then from Munich to Washington on Unite Airlines. We got the confirmation of this flight around 6:30 pm after having to run around trying to make the payments for the ticket. He finally boarded the SAA flight to Munich and waited his 4 hours for the connecting flight. However, the United Airlines flight was canceled due to a technical problem. My son was told they would book them into a hotel and give them gift vouchers for food however, he did not have a visa for Germany and could not leave the airport and he was under age and could not be issued a day visa either. For a 20-year-old this was very stressful. He was then allocated a "POD" to sleep in at the airport and when he was looking for food all the shops had closed due to it being new years eve. He found only a cafe open and could buy something. He was the only person at the airport which was very daunting for him. The next morning he was informed that his flight would leave around 10:30 am. He finally arrived in the USA on the 2nd January after a very stressful time. This was all due to ACSA not having enough passport control gates open to get the airline passenger through quick enough. This is shocking, to say the least, and I expect ACSA to reimburse us for the inconvenience and extra costs we had due to their poor service.</p>