Airlink is customer care hell. Avoid them!!

Airlink does not care about customers! Never ever fly with them. I was booked to fly from OR Tambo to George, sat at the boarding gate (D7) as instructed on my boarding pass - from way before the boarding time until way after the departure time, and no plane arrived. Nor did any staff. The plane never came. The electronic board, which I had been watching all the time, eventually, at around 4.20pm, showed the flight as "closed". The plane had departed at 4.15pm - without me, from boarding gate E4. Myself AND 5 OTHER PASSENGERS started trying to figure out what the heck was going on. We were directed out of the boarding zone, to customer care, to the check-in desks, where we were eventually met by a supervisor, Miss Linomi Mohotane. We explained that no announcement about a gate change had been made over the loudspeakers (they were in working order, as we heard 2 British Airways gate changes announced while we sat there), nor were we met by an Airlink employee to tell us of the change, nor did the electronic board at the gate indicate the change. We tried to explain that we simply did as instructed on our boarding passes. We went to the gate, sat there and our plane left without us.

This is where it starts getting bad. For about 2 hours miss Mohotane "investigated" how it could have happened, and how it could all be our fault. She found out that 2 ground personnel members had "tried to find passengers" to point them to the right gate. We answered that we sat right by the gate for more than 30 minutes and never saw anyone from Airlink. We asked her to let the ground personnel come to us, so we could get to the bottom of it: who were they? Where did they look for us, if not by the gate on our boarding passes? Why didn't 6 of us see them at all, for more than 30 minutes? She never produced them, and yet seemed to believe their word, rather than the word of 6 people who had never met, lived in different countries and yet were somehow conspiring to lie to her.

Then she checked if we received the texts and emails sent out by Airlink, notifying us of the gate change. We found that, indeed, most of us had gotten texts and emails, only we were not instructed when we checked in to keep checking our phones and emails for possible boarding gate changes. Our phones were off. Some of us had no wifi. Personally I have an American phone with no network coverage here, so texts don't come through. I only email on my laptop, which was off. We weren't checking these devices as we had not been instructed to do so, and we couldn't, in any event. Miss Mohotane seemed to hold the position that we now shared culpability for missing our flights, - or actually carried the sole responsibility, as she never once indicated that Airlink might be in error - because we didn't check our phones. We tried, to no avail, to explain that this has NEVER been the position of an airline, because people's devices die on them. Indeed, one gentleman in our unlucky ensemble had been traveling for more than 24 hours and his device was dead. One guy had been booked in by a travel agent and the number supp**** online was that of the agent - and so apparently it was his fault that he didn't receive a text message. Miss Mohotane claimed she could check security cameras to see if our claims were true: That no Airlink representative ever came looking for us, that no announcement was made on the electronic boards. We asked her to do so, and of course it didn't happen. she disappeared for "10 minutes" to go call someone (this was after more than 90 minutes of us getting nowhere, and of course returned more than 20 minutes later. In all this time we were never offered an apology, not even a glass of water nor a chair to sit on. One lady (64 years old) couldn't stand anymore and had to sit on another mans luggage - completely exhausted. The gentleman who had flown from London is 72 years old and had to go sit in one of the check-in staff's chairs, as he was dead on his feet. No help offered from Airlink check-in staff, who just sat there and stared at these 6 culprits. They saw these old people suffering and didn't even offer a glass of water. I couldn't believe it.

Well it got worse, as Miss Mohotane came back, told us to find hotels at our own cost, book new tickets at our own cost and email/call Airlink to see if we could get a refund. We were speechless, and then got very angry. This had now gone on for more than 2 hours, and we kept saying to each other: All we did was go to the boarding gate typed on our boarding passes and waited there for our flight. That's it. We did nothing wrong but had to pay this massive penalty now. We asked Miss Mohotane how Airlink could check in six people, SIX, on a very small flight to George, and yet let the flight leave without coming to look for them at the gate typed on the boarding passes. Where did they assume we were when they left without us? In a spa? Drunk somewhere? Simply not caring whether we made our flight?? SIX people who didn't know each other - but we were all basically told it was our fault we missed the plane. Miss Mohotane told us that another group of passengers were indeed found by the ground staff - and this seemed to prove that we weren't where we supposed to be and they couldn't find us. We told her that her video footage would prove that we were always right there by the gate, and to please call up the footage to verify - this of course she didn't do! We were all stranded right there, 2 hours after our plane had left and asked Miss Mohotane where we should go. Some had no money. She couldn't care less.

Again: British Airways made 2 gate announcements while we sat waiting at our gate. No Airlink announcements were made. We were told this is ACSA's fault. No electronic board announcement was made at our gate - we weren't told whose fault this was, but Airlink took no responsibility. We were told Airlink ground staff came to our gate to find passengers, yet all 6 of us sat there for more than 30 minutes and never saw these people. And when asked to see them to question them, they were not called. (It is very obvious to us that these people never came to our gate and we challenge Airlink to prove otherwise). We were told there was security footage (as if that would scare us into admitting some kind of error) and when asked for it, it was not produced. When we asked for a hotel voucher and to be placed on the next available flight to George (the next morning) we were told to basically get the hell away from the check in stations, go find and pay for hotels ourselves, book new tickets and try to claim from Airlink. I have never, ever seen an airline care less for customers - some elderly, some clearly with not enough money for hotels and new bookings. I have never seen an airline not apologize for inconvenience caused, or try to shift responsibility onto customers for not being able to check emails and texts on their dead/silent/switched off/out of network devices. I have just never seen such bad client service or bad PR. Airlink should NOT be in business . An airline has the obligation to do everything in its power to notify passengers of a gate change. malfunction...and NOT letting the aircraft depart when a significant number of passengers had clearly not taken note of the boarding gate change. I keep wondering how Airlink could let a flight to George (a VERY small flight) depart without 6 passengers...SIX!!! Rather deplaning us than assuming we were all at the original gate and simply not caring. My personal loss is great. I missed a business meeting in George, had to book a airport hotel room for R1414.84, had to eat here for R200, and was a "no show" at my rental car agency. I lost R6100. All because I dared trust the boarding gate printed on my boarding pass and dutifully sat there waiting for my plane, which I assumed was just very late.

I've emailed Airlink Customer Care and their response is still that they are not liable. They insist their ground representative came looking for us. They insist the electronic board showed the flight change. They insist sending texts and emails was enough. They didn't ask to see the video testimonies I have from all passengers involved. They are calling all of us us ***** to get out of their responsibility. This is NOT good enough.