3 incidents of racial bias at CPT International Airport (19 June 2021)

I am one of your patrons and would like to lay a complaint about the service I received from your airline recently.

Some background: I was initially scheduled to fly from CPT to Johannesburg on Saturday, 19 June 2021 on the 12h40 flight. Two days before the departure date, my travel agent called to tell me that you would no longer be operating the 12h40 flight, and moved me to an earlier flight, departing CPT at 10h15. Once at the airport, the 10h15 flight was canceled due to "technical difficulties", and I was re-booked to fly at 15h10.

A number of things struck me during this entire debacle, the most poignant of which was the ****** I experienced on two counts from your staff:

Incident 1: In the queue when checking into the 10h15 flight, you had six labeled BA counters (from left to right: you had 2 Club counters, 2 Traveler counters and 2 Bag Drop Counters). There were four or five BA staff manning those counters (1 or 2 for Club, 1 for Traveler and 2 for Bag Drop). I was standing at the front of the Traveler queue. The BA staff member attending to our queue left (so that there was no-one manning the Traveler queue). Instead of reassigning one of the Bag Drop staff (of which there were definitely two) to attend to Traveler queue, both of them continued to serve the Bag Drop Queue (which naturally, is typically more of a non-black demographic as they would have checked in online or on their app ahead of time). I would have expected that the woman manning Bag Drop closest to our queue would either change her service to exclusively handle the Traveler queue (so that at least someone was serving us) OR alternate between calling one Traveler passenger, then one Bag Drop passenger. I watched her call three Bag Drop passengers consecutively and when I tried to raise this concern (as now the entire Traveler queue was going unserved), she ignored me. The Bag Drop customers were also visibly uncomfortable as they could see what was going on.

Incident 2: The second ****** incident I experienced was on leaving Gate A10 when the 10h15 flight was canceled and having to return back to departures check-in. BA was not servicing anyone from their check-in counters and instead redirected all of us to one of two places: either to the Kulula check-in counters or to the Kulula ticket office. I stood in the queue at the Kulula check-in counters until I was told that only those with connecting flights in Johannesburg were being served there (which was interesting to me given they had been given first option to leave the terminal and were serviced separately before everyone else). At this point, I joined the other queue, which led to the ticket office. Once in the ticket office queue, I waited for a while. The manager on duty, a woman wearing a pink sleeveless body warmer jacket, came to the ticket office queue to redirect people to the BA check-in counters, which were now open again to service people. What bothered me about that was that she arbitrarily cut the queue and redirected mostly white passengers to the newly opened BA counters. When I asked her what was going on, she ignored me (similarly to the woman in the check-in counter), until she had served all your white patrons and moved them from the back of the ticket office queue, fast-tracking them to the newly-opened BA check-in counters.

Incident 3: I was also disappointed that BA did not offer a gesture of apology (like a meal voucher, which I believe is standard industry practice for flights delayed four or more hours) to the passengers inconvenienced by the flight delay/cancelation. Or perhaps you did, to a subset of your patrons, and I didn't fit that demographic. That would be consistent with all I experienced with the aforementioned incidents. I'll never know.

In closing, to say I am disappointed would be a grave understatement. I have, for many years, chosen to fly British for what was (past tense) exceptional service. I have been so sorely disappointed by my last experience with your airline that I wonder whether it is worth patronising your business in future.

Deeply aggrieved, Busiswa