SAA A340 seats

[Mike Blackburn]

Has anyone flown SAA on their new A340-600? My father-in-law flew JNB-FRA and, although he is a relatively tall man, he felt that the leg-room was much worse than on the B747.

Has anyone else had similar experiences? (Apologies if this topic has come up before...)

I guess it is simply a case of the bean-counters (who no doubt fly Business Class) trying to squeeze as many souls as possible onto the aircraft.

In their defense, I heard that the lack of legroom may have something to do with the IFE, and it's situation under the seat?

Any opinions?

[PAXboy]

I don't know what the seat pitch is but have heard that SAA are getting adverse comments about this and (alledgedly) are considering changing the seat pitch. If so, a major blunder in an a/c delivered less than five months ago!

I have not travelled SAA long haul for 15 years, so am way out of touch.

May I suggest that you ask the question in the African Aviation forum? Since Cpt Pprune does not like duplicated threads, why not ask our esteemed mod-bod to move this thread to AA for you? Go to the main page of this fourm and you will see a link to Xenia in the top left.

Cheers.

[cjp]

Was on the SAA A340-600 as mentioned, CDG-JNB-CDG, in April and May 2003, and don't recall any particular problems. However, it was a fairly empty flight, and from memory I had 4 economy seats to stretch out on both ways, so I guess I wouldn't have noticed any bad seat pitch that was present!

:)

btw This aircraft type is currently being leased by SAA from BMI, and was in full BMI livery when I flew on it. Pity I couldn't claim my United Mileage Plus (through BMI) though... :rolleyes:

[Mike Blackburn]

Are you sure about that? I was only aware that SAA were leasing A330s from BMI, but I thought that the A346 fleet were SAA birds from the word go. I understand that SAA will be leasing some ex LH 340s, -200 models I belive.

From what I understood, although I stand to be corrected, SAA is not using the A330 at the moment. I know that if i'm wrong, no-one will hesitate to let me know it!!

[PAXboy]

I think that the BMI a/c are simply on short term lease to fill a gap in delivery. This is due, I think, to SAA changing from Boeing to Airbus.

I saw the BMI machines at JNB when I was there at the beginning of the year and was rather surprised but soon learnt that BMI needed to do something with them as they had not got the traffic/routes from MAN that they had been expecting.

The first 340-600 is the one with the seat pitch problem, that I have read about.

(This answer is not definitive!)

[BAe 146-100]

Hi,

I was in JNB Febuary and saw G-WWBD SAA A330. It was in full South African colours.

South African A330-243 (http://www.airliners.net/open.file/378154/M/)

BAe 146-100

[Mike Blackburn]

At one stage, one of the leased A330s was in full BMI colours. This was, of course an unusual sighting at JNB, made my day....

I wonder if SAA are lpanning to get rid of all thier 747s? It would be a pity.

[cjp]

Terribly sorry, I stand corrected. It was the twin I was on, an a330.

However, having just looked it up, I can confirm it the aircraft is definately in BMI colours, (well, I didn't need to look that up, I flew on it) and is also staffed by a full BMI cockpit crew. Safety cards were BMI but flight attendants, menus and inflight magazines SAA.

The lease is a stop-gap measure until the fulfillment of an SAA order of 9 A340-600, and six A340-300Es. They also have on order 11 A319 and 15 A320.