Never fly with Nightmare Air - RwandAir

I am writing this while stranded in Dubai due to the incompetency of your staff at RwandAir via Holiday Aviation.

Johanna Tsatsi was the original representative to deal with our issue.

My husband contracted Covid while abroad in Dubai and the airline was informed on 8 July prior to our 10 July departure. Johanna advised that she would keep the booking open until we are ready to travel.

On 14 July we all had our negative tests and were fit to travel. We were ready to fly home on the 15 July flight from DXB to JNB. Our travel agent tried the entire business day of 14 July to get hold of someone at Rwandair South Africa offices on several different occasions. No calls or emails were answered. Someone eventually answered the phone at 15:00. My agent immediately responded via email to confirm the telephonic conversation. Two hours later, she emailed requesting a response but to no avail.

The next day 15 July again sent an email to *** at 9:30 am as there was still no response. My husband also sent emails to several RwandAir email addresses.

After 10am on 15 July Johanna finally responded via email stating that she is working on our booking. More than 24 hours since we were trying to make contact. This type of customer service is unacceptable.

Johanna then emailed Lietha the following:

We managed to get the same booking class confirmed , please see below confirmed reservation :- The amount to pay will be R1200.00 . Payment can be made at the below bank account with immediate clearance so that the funds can reflect immediately . Please email proof of payment as soon as payment is made . The reservation will autocancel today at 11h30 if the ticket is not issued .

We immediately paid the R1200 to confirm our flight home .

6 hours later at 4pm I emailed Johanna that we had not received our tickets. She replies 3 hours later that we should pay R26134 in flight differences by 6pm as per Kigali head office.

The R1200 quote that she sent us was legally binding and which we paid for immediately. It was ******* for her to retract on a written agreement of travel confirmation and payment.

Michel Anjinho is another representative who was included in the emails and made promises but we have still not heard from her either.

Your staff happily went on their way for the weekend without doing their job and completing our booking. Johanna demanded I pay R26k by 6 pm so that she could go off and enjoy her weekend! This type of service is deplorable. We were left stranded in a foreign country due to the pathetic service from your representatives. Another level of incompetence was shown when I discovered that my 12 year old son was booked on to the flight by himself.

Your staff at the OR Tambo office also do not answer their calls timeously and I had to call more than 10 times after opening time this morning before someone even bothered to answer. The staff there told me they can’t help me because Johanna and Michel don’t work on weekends.

I even went by taxi to the Rwandair Bur Dubai office where the staff were very accommodating, but unfortunately unable to help me. The Rwandair Counter at the airport only opens at about 10 pm in the evening at DXB so we could not even go there for help.

Included in our journey, on the first leg of our trip, Rwandair forced us to get onto an Ethiopian Airlines flight, with one hour to get to the airport or our flight would be cancelled. We caught Covid on that flight in the first place.

A representative from your airline named Thembela Dladla called our agent on the 16th Saturday morning after I had sent countless emails and made several expensive calls to JNB and Kigali during the night.

Many thanks to Thembela Dladla from the Rwandair JNB office for issuing our tickets and assisting with completing our booking. He kept Our agent informed all along the way. He was the only staff member capable of doing their job.

I was however not impressed with his manner on the call with me and the fact that he passed the blame of this situation onto my agent Lietha, by saying that she did not know how to do her job. This is untrue and the blame falls entirely on your organization and your *********** staff. Lietha has kept me informed all along this nightmare of a process.

I intend to take this matter further to seek compensation for the emotional stress and financial implications due to your staff. Once we were ready to fly home, we were forced to stay another 3 days and spend on accommodation, food and transport all because your staff cannot answer their phones or respond to emails.

I will also be lodging this complaint with ASATA.

Rest assured, I will never Fly with RwandAir again.