This is a personal experience so don’t doubt the writer. At the outset, I want to state quite seriously that I hope our business does not treat clients like this.

I recently had to fly from Port Elizabeth (PE) to Cape Town on SA Express, our national carrier’s sister company. I checked in on-line and was allocated Seat 3C. When I arrived at PE airport, the check in attendant stated firstly that I hadn’t checked in yet, notwithstanding my electronic confirmation. She then stated that I had checked in but the flight was full.

Following this, I was then informed that because I am ‘male’ - implying heavier than a female - I was told that “they needed to seat me further back” in the plane. She said this was always the case when the flight was full as they “liked to put females up front.”

I was thus re-seated some rows back. Look, I don’t really care where I sit as my priority is purely a wish to get from A to B. The problem for me is, at less than 80kgs, I don’t believe I am relatively heavy. Nevertheless, I don’t consider myself the gullible type so I observed on boarding the plane who the incumbent was in seat 3C.

Surprise, surprise! It wasn’t a woman and it certainly wasn’t a man “lighter” than me.

Clearly the attendant got away with whatever drivel came to mind to try appeasing a “gullible” passenger.

I sincerely hope this attendant doesn’t get promoted to the fuel department of the National Airline. I would hate it if we had to rely on her estimations of how much fuel is required for any flight destination. Be that as it may, I sincerely hope we would take action if any of our company members ever try similar “gullible drivel” options when dealing with our clients.

Credibility

I put this story forward as the issue of ‘credibility’ has been at the forefront of my mind recently. An example is the long term parking rate increasing from R45 to R60 per day at OR Tambo. That is 33% right? Is that justified? How can it be?

On a recent drive from Johannesburg to Durban, the toll fees for the car I was travelling in came to a total R159.50 (R584.00 for a truck-trailer combination). This is about one third of the vehicle’s fuel cost or approximately 25c per kilometre. I think this is a lot of money.

I count myself lucky to be among those who can afford to pay this amount. Unfortunately, many of our country’s people cannot so they will use and devise any scheme they can think of to avoid paying these extravagant fees and divert onto the non-tolled alternative routes.

The reason I am talking about toll fees is due to all the lovely new advertisements promoting the toll roads and what a wonderful service SANRAL (the South African National Roads Agency) is providing for the road users. There are so many of these new ads around at the moment that I think they (Sanral) are trying to convince us of something we have difficulty in believing the first time around.

We are told that opting for a toll route is good for us. Fantastic, in fact. However, what about the secondary roads? How are they going to claw back the massive under-spend on non tolled roads, especially when the toll fees are so high? Surely this will cause more and more road users to do everything in their power to avoid the tolls at almost any cost.

Furthermore, it would be great if we could be presented with a master plan for South Africa’s entire road network and not just the roll road network. I apologise if one is available because my understanding is that there isn’t one.

The current plan showing us routes that “because of capital expenditure and investment” basically replicates a network of toll roads and reminds me of my attendant with the credibility problem.

I just don’t buy into the idea that this new set of toll costs is for the greater good of South African truckers and other road users. The current costs are already exorbitant. (I nearly wrote extortionate there, but that would have been a Freudian slip wouldn’t it?)