As so often happens at conferences, the first day of Africa’s Travel Indaba ran a little late. Our session’s wonderful facilitator, Carol Ofori did her best to make up some time, but the time sped past relentlessly. Which meant I was late meeting up with close friend, Mel Harvard, with whom I’d planned a quick catch-up on the way to the airport in Durban.
When I left the session, I reached for my phone to let Mel know I was on the way. Only to discover that my phone couldn’t connect. To anything, or anyone. I tried everything I could think of, checked and double-checked all my settings, but my phone might as well have been a brick that could talk to me.
I managed to reach Mel thanks to fellow speaker Arthur Goldstuck, who was kind enough to call her on his phone. So that was one problem solved.
When Mel and I arrived at the airport we went to check-in for my flight. To discover that the travel agent, who had handled the bookings for my trip sponsors, had changed my return flight to an earlier time. My flight had gone two hours earlier. And no-one had let me know of the change.
There I was – with no way home, and no way to tell my husband I wouldn’t be on the flight he was meeting.
I’d prefer not to dwell on the impact on me as a blind person travelling alone. I acknowledge that I am too reliant on my mobile phone to keep me in contact with the world, and to be able to use data to help me interpret what is happening around me. Besides, I’m sure you can imagine what it must have felt like to face this disaster.
Thankfully, I was able to take a deep breath – well, several deep breaths – and focus on solving the problems one step at a time. Mel called my husband, Craig, and told him what was happening. And the fantastic staff at Safair went out of their way to help me find a ticket home. When they were unable to find a seat on the remaining flights on their airline they even reached out to other providers to ask if they could assist me. And managed to find me a Cemair flight with an available seat.
On top of this, the travel agent hadn’t listed on my booking that I was a disabled passenger who would be travelling alone and consequently needed airport assistance, which you are strongly encouraged to arrange with the airline ahead of time. On leaving Cape Town I was told I needed to check-in for my flight two hours ahead to ensure they could find someone to assist me. Well, with the new ticket I had to get, I had the required two hours. But it still felt stressful, to say the least.
I can’t tell you how relieved I was that my phone started to work as I was paying for my new ticket, and everything was back on track.
I still don’t know why the travel agent changed the flight. Perhaps I never will. And my trip sponsors have kindly agreed to arrange for me to be reimbursed for the price of the ticket I had to purchase. Also, the next day I received an apology from my mobile network provider with an apology for the network outage.
Finally, a distinct silver lining was that Mel and I managed to spend some quality time catching-up over an unplanned supper at Durban Airport. With an incredibly welcome glass of wine, which you can see from the joyful image accompanying the post.
I don’t think I have ever been so happy to step off a flight back in Cape Town as I was that day.
Huge gratitude to all those who helped me get through the experience with a degree of calm – I seriously couldn’t have kept my cool without Mel and the wonderful airline staff who helped me.
On another note, I wanted to let you know that I will be speaking at a public online event, the Seeing Ability Conference, with friend and fellow speaker, Brittany McCormick. It’s at 2:00 PM on Saturday, 22 June 2024. If you’d like to hear us, book your ticket now on https://www.quicket.co.za/events/253967-seeing-ability/
