sundowner

A friend told me that right now SAA has overbooked the flights from Joburg to Dulles by as many as 50-200 people. They said to get to the airport 4 or 5 hours early for a better chance of getting a seat.

tripster

what do they offer you as compensation?

DonTopaz

<i>A friend told me that right now SAA has overbooked the flights from Joburg to Dulles by as many as 50-200 people. They said to get to the airport 4 or 5 hours early for a better chance of getting a seat.</i>

By golly, if it's on the Internet, I guess it must be true.

RBCal

If you don't believe anything you read on the internet, why are you here and reading this?

sundowner

It didn't happen to me but it did happen to someone else. He arrived 2.5 hours early and was the 80th person on the list to get on the oversold flight. His travel agent told him that he's been getting reports of this recently. You can believe it, don't believe, research it yourself, get to the airport early, get there late - it doesn't matter to me.

When I heard it I wondered if it has to do with the cancellation of the Atlanta flights. If you had reservations to fly JNB-ATL, you are now flying JNB-Dulles. They didn't add extra planes or extra flights so doesn't that mean there are 2 planes worth of people flying on one plane?

As the 80th person on the list, he didn't get a seat. The compensation he was given was a hotel room, 2 meals and 1 international phone call (for appx 50 people).

DonTopaz

Every airline overbooks, and there are indeed instances of people with confirmed reservations who are denied boarding. If this happens to you, you should ask to see the airline's denied boarding compensation policy, as described in its conditions of carriage. (For flights to/from the European Union, the EU's compensation policy is applicable.)