Bad service from kulula

On the 18th of August 2018, I booked a return flight for my son from Lanseria to Durban and back, departing on the 3rd of October and back on the 7th of October 2018. After I received the confirmation from Kulula, I realised that the departure time on the 3rd was incorrect on his flight. We were travelling as a family and wanted us to travel in the same flight. I called Kulula call centre (***), to ask them to correct the time for me and they told me that I needed to pay a certain amount of money. That amount to be paid was more than booking a new one way flight to Durban and it made economic sense for me to book a new one way flight to Durban. Come the 3rd of October, we departed on the same flight as a family after a flight – delay of almost an hour. We never got any compensation for the delay.

On Saturday the 6th of October 2018, I wanted to check in online for my son, using the original code of XOCQEY for flight MN536 and I could not. On Sunday morning I called their call centre at 7am and spoke to a lady called Carline, on their customer careline ***, who told me that my son’s return flight was cancelled. She said the reason why it was cancelled was because he never presented himself at Lanseria Airport on the 3rd of October 2018 and they automatically cancelled it without any notification.

I was never refunded my money and that was it. I had to book a bus for my son to travel back to Johannesburg and he travelled the whole night to get back home.

The flight from Durban to Johannesburg on the 7th of October was initially booked for departure at 18h30 but we were delayed and departed just before 8pm. All we got from them was a notification that the flight is delayed, sorry for the inconvenience. This is the same airline that when you are late, they just leave and you forfeit your fare. They are acting with impunity and bullying us passengers. We get punished when we are late yet they can be late and it’s business as usual. There is no recourse on them.

We spend our hard –earned cash only to be treated like trash. I am very aggrieved because I never cancelled a flight or did my son not present himself at the airport. We have the confirmation of the flight from Durban and we never received any correspondence to the contrary from the airline. This airline actually thinks its the best thing ever that has ever happened to South Africa. Their end is nigh! Their days in the sky are numbered. They think that they are law unto themselves and have no respect for the passengers.