Background
This is a write-up on my flight from JNB to GBE (Gaborone, Botswana). Having flown into JNB on SQ478, which i have slept thru with the 2.30am flight-time and hence have nothing to say, and sitting off 2 hrs of layover in the SAA Baobab lounge [see separate thread], i proceeded towards Gate A19 for my flight to GBE (Gaborone, Botswana).
The holding area for the remote standing gates resembles more like a bus terminal for passengers to be transported to the remote standings.
At 09:00, 20 min ahead of scheduled flight time, the 'gate' was opened:
Though most of the passengers boarded the bus, the driver and ticketing agent took quite a while before dispatching us to the plane, resulting in this scene:
In the meantime, i had the opportunity to witness a pallet of luggage [is there a proper term for this?] fallen off a tractor-wagon to block a service road. Took abt 5 mins before a forklift was summoned. I had fished out my camera by now, hoping to capture the drama, alas mine was no SLR and the scene was beyond my point and shoot. My fears that the forklift was the wrong machine was confirmed when the pallet tipped over to spill out the luggage therein, including one brown box with red FRAGILE labels all over it. At this juncture, the driver and agent decided we have waited enough and i was only able to capture this shot. Looks like some pple will be missing their luggage:
After a slow tour of JNB from the airside [the bus had to stop at every junction to check if any aircraft wld jump on us] we finally caught sight of the South African Express ramp.
This is a write-up on my flight from JNB to GBE (Gaborone, Botswana). Having flown into JNB on SQ478, which i have slept thru with the 2.30am flight-time and hence have nothing to say, and sitting off 2 hrs of layover in the SAA Baobab lounge [see separate thread], i proceeded towards Gate A19 for my flight to GBE (Gaborone, Botswana).
The holding area for the remote standing gates resembles more like a bus terminal for passengers to be transported to the remote standings.
At 09:00, 20 min ahead of scheduled flight time, the 'gate' was opened:
Though most of the passengers boarded the bus, the driver and ticketing agent took quite a while before dispatching us to the plane, resulting in this scene:
In the meantime, i had the opportunity to witness a pallet of luggage [is there a proper term for this?] fallen off a tractor-wagon to block a service road. Took abt 5 mins before a forklift was summoned. I had fished out my camera by now, hoping to capture the drama, alas mine was no SLR and the scene was beyond my point and shoot. My fears that the forklift was the wrong machine was confirmed when the pallet tipped over to spill out the luggage therein, including one brown box with red FRAGILE labels all over it. At this juncture, the driver and agent decided we have waited enough and i was only able to capture this shot. Looks like some pple will be missing their luggage:
After a slow tour of JNB from the airside [the bus had to stop at every junction to check if any aircraft wld jump on us] we finally caught sight of the South African Express ramp.
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