Horrible Experience

If you ever consider flying with your pet from O.R Johannesburg to Cape town (with Airlink) please take the time to read what happened to us!

Sunday the 8th of August / Yesterday my boyfriend and I had two separate flights booked, both of us would have traveled with Lift but they informed me that I would not be able to travel with my 13 week old puppy so I moved my flight to Airlink so my puppy could fly with me. Unfortunately she could not be in the cabin with me and my flight was an hour before my boyfriends flight and the Airlink ticket price was more expensive so I decided to fly on my own.

When we gave her to the O.R airport employee I told my boyfriend that something is wrong, the employee gave me a bad feeling as he had a dismissive and irritated attitude. He took her and her little cage and scanned it and put her around the corner and said ‘go’.

I landed about 2pm, got my bag and waited by the Fragile baggage area for my puppy. About 15 minutes went by so I asked the lady sitting there where my puppy is her reply was ‘just wait’. Time went by and I started to ask questions / and to call in and find out where she is! I waited an hour, standing there seeing everyone take their thing from fragile baggage and not seeing my puppy. Finally after an hour an Airlink employee came, I explained the situation and gave him information on my flight and my puppy. He went ‘looking’ for her, he came back and said to me ‘don’t worry, she is outside I just saw her and she’ll be here in max 5min’. After 30min she was still missing so he **** to me and never came back!

My boyfriend landed and ran around looking for people to help us, and give us more information. The Airport and Airlink employees did not help at all! I was in tears as it has been 2hours of waiting with no answers.

Then I was told she was never even on my flight?!

I was very upset, then finally Asive from Airlink showed up and called the O.R Airlink department, after 20min of calling them they never answered any of the calls. I told her to go look on the system if my puppy is still in Johannesburg. Andre the Airlink supervisor called Asive on her phone and asked to talk to me. He told me that he was going to find out what is going on, he called her again and told me that he received news that she was never on my flight and she is on the next flight and will land after 5.

I have been standing there since 2, thinking something very bad happened (maybe someone stole her or that she died).

They told me if she arrives they will contact me and I can come back to the airport and get her or they will deliver her - I said ‘Hell No’ I am not moving until I get her. My boyfriend took our bags to the car, they told us that it won’t be a problem to come back in (Fragile baggage area) to wait. So I waited and when he tried to come back in and wait with me - the security would not let him back in. They pushed and yelled, we were treated like *********!

I had so sit on a metal pole for hours as they sat there comfortably laughing.

At 17:30, the door opened and there she finally was. Thank you to Andre and Asive for trying to help but this is unacceptable from O.R and Airlink and I won’t leave this until I know exactly what happened and why she was never loaded onto my flight!