Review — South African Airways A320 — Cape Town to Johannesburg — Business Class
I have always dreamt of flying on a private jet and while it’s still on my bucket list it just hasn’t happened for me yet.
The next best thing happened on our flight from Cape Town to Johannesburg.
While the flight between CPT and JNB is a short one (~1:30 in the air), this flight would provide me with some foreshadowing as we were connecting in JNB to an international flight to Sao Paulo on South African.
As was the case in Istanbul, we were taken by bus to board the plane via airstairs rather than via jet bridge. While it is certainly less convenient, I always love the chance to get up close and personal to aircraft. The smell of jet fuel, the noise of the engines idling … all of it just brings a smile to my face.
The A320 we would be flying on is a narrowbody plane so no layflat seats but nonetheless, the seats were very comfortable for this short positioning flight.
As we sat down, we saw numerous people stream by to get to their economy seats and to my surprise, NOBODY sat down in any of the Business Class seats.
What I found even stranger is that the flight attendants did not upgrade any of the economy class passengers to Business Class. I don’t know if it was because there were no passengers with status or if they simply didn’t want to deal with the hassle of additional Business Class passengers to serve but in either case, I was pretty happy that we had the entire front of the plane to ourselves. Based on my desire to fly in luxury but only pay a fraction of what economy class passengers pay for their tickets, I figured this was as close to a private jet as I was going to get in a long while.
Being a short haul flight, I didn’t expect much but there was no in flight entertainment which is something that was unexpected. That being said, with the flight being so short, coupled with the fact that they served a full breakfast, I didn’t really mind.
Another thing that I like about sitting up front is that you often get a view of the cockpit going through their flight checklist before they secure the cabin doors.
As we got to cruising altitude the flight attendants provided breakfast. I don’t know what it is about breakfast on airplanes but it is always the least appealing mean in my opinion. Maybe it’s that you can’t really make eggs and sausage look pretty but I’m never blown away when they bring the tray out.
I will say that despite the look of the food, it was actually quite tasty. They yogurt and muesli were actually very good as was the croissant and eggs. I passed on the sausage and potatoes but I felt full and satisfied after the meal.
The service was quick and very attentive which gave me something to look forward to as our next flight was from Johannesburg to Sao Paulo.
