It seems true that people seem to love to hate SAA.
If you look around at other airlines like BA, Virgin, Lufthansa, KLM, they make SAA look wonderful. Their cabin crew can also be accused of having attitudes, and being quite cheeky at times. Their service is also very average. Don't talk about Olympic, or the low cost carriers in the States! Quantas also very dismal. The problem with SAA is that
some, not all of their 2000 cabin crew are rude. It's always the bad stories that make news headlines. If anyone out there has ever dealt directly with pax, you would know that they can be extremely rude as well. SAA was in such a rush to get the BEE thing going so quickly, they were employing anyone off the street. Now they realise that they need more mature people, those that have more people skills.
I would imagine that a lot of folk are also a little bitter and jealous that they haven't got into SAA. I hear it from some of the remarks that pilots from the competitor airlines make about the Airways guys. It's not their fault. Goverment make the policies, not flight operations or SAAPA. At the end of the day we are all in the same team! Isn't human nature funny. It's always easier to break something down than to build it up. Building something up takes effort, breaking down - for the no brainers.
