My complete inability to be organized has always been the source of much pain in my life. It drives my mom insane, causes my step-mother’s blood pressure to shoot through the roof of even the tallest buildings and drives my roommates and friends insane, but most importantly it has caused a lot of pain to my rather sensitive derrière. If I have to receive one more hiding or detention for my completely retarded organizing abilities I may actually die.
But, for once it has paid off, because I was intelligent enough to not book a flight back home.
Yes, I know, it sounds pretty absurd. Why on earth would that be a good thing? Well, all you people who booked flights home with 1time now have a slight problem don’t you. Yeah, guess who’s laughing now.
Well, I was…
Until I realized with an urgent sense of dread forming in the pit of my stomach that if 1time wasn’t flying anymore then all the other airlines would have to compensate for the lack of available flights which inevitably means increased flight fares.
Slightly problematic, to say the least.
So how on earth are we all going to get home at the end of exams? Will the other airlines be increasing the amounts of available flights? I have been away from home since July and desperately need to have a home-cooked meal (the real reason that students are going home this holiday).
I fear that this whole 1time fiasco is a much bigger issue than I originally thought it would be. Actually scratch that, I knew it was a huge issue, I just didn’t realize that it directly affects my life until I got a rather demanding tweet from a friend of mine (but I’ll leave that for another day).
So what actually happened?
Well on Friday afternoon a friend of mine stood in a queue waiting to board a flight from Cape Town to Johannesburg. As she was boarding news broke that 1time airlines had filed for liquidation and that many passengers were left stranded hoping for other flights. She was relieved to find out that her flight would be one of the last to take off and happily took her seat not realizing that the airhostess who showed her to her seat was holding back tears as she found out via the intercom that she’d just lost her job.
Yes, 1time has failed miserably. It has left many passengers stranded in foreign cities and airline personnel are stuck away from home and jobless. Truthfully however, people should have seen it coming. 1time has been in the news a lot lately regarding financial difficulties and most people realized that it was only a matter of time before they went bust. And boy did they go out with a bang!
So what happens now? Well Kulula and Mango have already stepped up to take the brunt of it and have promised more flights at the same costs and as we speak Nandos is probably coming up with some hilarious advert that will be deemed politically incorrect and pulled soon after airing. Actually, everything is just going to continue. Life is just going to carry on and in a few months people will have forgotten about this whole fiasco, just like every other drama that hits South Africa and is pulled completely out of proportion on various social networks because that’s the trend. Those who were directly affected will get over it or find other jobs. Life will go back to normal.
Kudos to the pilots for not going on strike though because that’s what South Africans do when life gets a bit rough.
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