RB
Rodger B
1 reviews | Active since Oct 2022
28 Oct 2022, 19:25
Shortened holiday and ridiculous changes to travel times
AfricaStay changed our flights times , making us travel at terrible times, effectively costing us a night of accommodation with no compensation. Imagine thinking that arriving at you destination at 1AM is acceptable, after booking to arrive at midday. At least the MD was courteous enough to return my call, but, the response was simply that their operators permit was declined? That should be your problem to solve, not mine to endure. I tried to provide an opportunity for you to rectify the matter before writing a review, however, the response was woefully inadequate.
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AfricaStay's replyOfficial
16 Jan 2023, 16:29Dear Rodger
Thank you for your review and once again I would like to apologise for the inconvenience caused by the time change on the flights. As explained, the time change on the flights was beyond our control. To put this into perspective, I would like to clarify the following:
- Currently there are no direct commercial flights between SA and Zanzibar. Due to this gap in the market, we started operating direct charter flights between Johannesburg and Zanzibar in September 2019. To date we have operated over 100 direct charter flights, transporting over 16 500 passengers at an investment of over R100 million Rand.
- Your flight was operated by FlySafair, currently the biggest airline operating withing South Africa. They have a fleet of modern 737-800 Boeing, operate over 125 flights per day and carry over 5 million passengers per year.
- In June 2022, Comair / Kulula went under liquidation. The demise of the airline created a huge shortage of capacity (airplanes) in SA. FlySafair has been using their fleet for domestic flights during the day and could only make available their aircraft to us for night charter flights to Zanzibar. Due to high demand for the destination we decided to operate the direct flights at night instead of cancelling the direct flights altogether.
- We also offer packages to Zanzibar on non-direct commercial flights such as Kenya Airways and Ethiopian Airlines, but these flights could take between 8 to 17 hours each way compared to the 3,5 hours on our direct flights. In addition, the packages on our direct flights are on average R2 000 to R5 000 per person cheaper. We often have specials with free transfers, free activities, etc on the packages based on the direct flights.
- In the meantime, we have implemented a Money Back Guarantee for all our direct charter flights to Zanzibar – should we cancel any flight for any reason we offer our clients a full refund on our direct flights (no questions asked) or we offer a free date change to another suitable direct flight to Zanzibar.
Despite the flight change I hope you and your family had an amazing holiday in Zanzibar!
Best Regards
AfricaStay.com Team
AfricaStay's reply16 Jan 2023, 16:29
Official
Dear Rodger
Thank you for your review and once again I would like to apologise for the inconvenience caused by the time change on the flights. As explained, the time change on the flights was beyond our control. To put this into perspective, I would like to clarify the following:
- Currently there are no direct commercial flights between SA and Zanzibar. Due to this gap in the market, we started operating direct charter flights between Johannesburg and Zanzibar in September 2019. To date we have operated over 100 direct charter flights, transporting over 16 500 passengers at an investment of over R100 million Rand.
- Your flight was operated by FlySafair, currently the biggest airline operating withing South Africa. They have a fleet of modern 737-800 Boeing, operate over 125 flights per day and carry over 5 million passengers per year.
- In June 2022, Comair / Kulula went under liquidation. The demise of the airline created a huge shortage of capacity (airplanes) in SA. FlySafair has been using their fleet for domestic flights during the day and could only make available their aircraft to us for night charter flights to Zanzibar. Due to high demand for the destination we decided to operate the direct flights at night instead of cancelling the direct flights altogether.
- We also offer packages to Zanzibar on non-direct commercial flights such as Kenya Airways and Ethiopian Airlines, but these flights could take between 8 to 17 hours each way compared to the 3,5 hours on our direct flights. In addition, the packages on our direct flights are on average R2 000 to R5 000 per person cheaper. We often have specials with free transfers, free activities, etc on the packages based on the direct flights.
- In the meantime, we have implemented a Money Back Guarantee for all our direct charter flights to Zanzibar – should we cancel any flight for any reason we offer our clients a full refund on our direct flights (no questions asked) or we offer a free date change to another suitable direct flight to Zanzibar.
Despite the flight change I hope you and your family had an amazing holiday in Zanzibar!
Best Regards
AfricaStay.com Team