V-Flyer

We planned a week in the Kruger, with our family and friends looking after the children.

Pictures can be found here : http://www.markhayden.co.uk/album/index.html
Write up of the Safari piece can be found here :
http://www.markhayden.co.uk

The last and only time my wife went to the clubhouse was when our 7 year old son was quick sick, so my wife did n't realy get a chance to enjoy it.

We decided that we would leave home around 2 pm, aiming to get at T3 and in the Clubhouse for 3pm, giving a good 5 hours to relax and enjoy the facility.

We checked in swiftly in the UC line, and obtained 18A and 18C. Since the changes have been made to the checkin area at T3, it is my opinion that the area is less prone to longer queues, or maybe I've just been in a quiet times.

We went through the Gold Security line, which my wife thought was way cool considering the usual scrum she has to go through, and following the obligatory purchases of reading material we were in the lounge just before 3pm.

My massage was booked for 4pm, and she was able to get a matching time, and we both had a back and shoulder massage.

The food was good, and we were called to the gate with around 50 minutes before pushback.

The PE cabin was not full, and we both headed off to sleep pretty quickly and chose not to eat again.

I collected the PowerMonkey duty free I pre-ordered and we landed ontime, and this time we were given a jet way. The last time I was at JNB in July 06, we were parked on a remote stand, and I thought this was done so a jet way was not tied up all way.

Deplaning was quick, but we then found we had arrived with a whole collection of other European Wide body aircraft, and Immigration was slow.

We both waited an age for the luggage belt to be announced, and when they did they got it wrong. We headed to the new one, to find that it was full of bags from a previous flight, and we could only guess that the owners were stuck in the huge immigration queue.

When the bags did start to come off, the UC, PE and Gold bags were not the first to appear. However, the bags were coming off slowly because the sensor to detect a free bag slot on the belt was not allowing any more bags to come out, as the bags were evenly spaced out.

I decided to use the trick I saw at SFO many years ago, where the luggage handlers place the bags next to each other, on their end to pack in as many bags as possible, leaving a larger space to allow more bags. This clearly worked, and when other passengers saw the effect, we had a team of about 4 of us, re-aligning the bags.

The Virgin ground crew were not very well informed, and nor did they keep us informed. We waited a good 90 minutes for the bags to come off.

I hope they get it sorted for the 2010 World Cup !

We met our friends, who were moving to Saudi the next day, and were unable to take us on Safari, and headed off to collect our hire car. This would be an interesting drive to the Kruger, using the TomTom maps I had downloaded a few nights previously.

An excellent start to the holiday with Virgin, the lack of attention to the luggage belt and the general chaos there shows that the airport needs to think about how it handles lots of visitors.

Return leg about to be posted.

Thanks for the TR[:D]

cheers
alex

Great TR! Thanks for posting!

GJ

Wonderfull pictures thanks for the links to your piccies, really makes me want to visit and experience the whole reserve thing, i hope that spider wasnt too close to your quarters.

cheers
alex