If the pilot is here would you please raise your hand?

Piglet, my long suffering girlfriend/manager/disciplinary hearing adjudicator had to make an emergency trip to London yesterday to buy art at an auction.

So last night I was at Jan Smu...err, Joburg Inter....errr...the ORtiport or whatever that pit of depair is called now, shoulder down savagely head-butting my way through aimlessly wandering, painfully slow, migrating masses of passenger matter when I stole a quick glance at the board for the Piglet's SAA flight. The flight was marked 'cancelled'...huh?

Now delayed I have done, missed even, but cancelled? So, side-stepping the nearest sweaty, chewing passenger in bokkie jersey off to London, bobbing and weaving through the extended muslim family in full battle kit and running headlong through a forest of wrapped and taped slender wooden giraffes, we finally joined the mother of all queue's at the SAA counter. Since Piglet had to be in London for an auction the following day, cancelled was not an option!

Much time passes...

We duly managed, with no less then three ping-pong encounters between airline kiosks, to get the poor soul onto a Virgin flight and got SAA to pay for it. Upon leaving the SAA counter for the last time, I thought I would find out more about the actual cause of cancellation from the only friendly person on duty that night likely to give me a straight answer. The reply was simple but staggering...sir, (wry smile), we lost the pilot. That is exactly how she phrased it! Now I am no PR man but I am thinking...sir, we have had a staffing issue might have saved a bit of face there? I mean would you want to fly with the pilot should they find him, sober him up and prop him up behind the joystick? If this person could not get to the airport from their house, how the hell can they get from Joburg, via lots of Africa to London...at night!

Well within an hour, the flight had been resheduled for 09h35 the next day, all the passengers went home, the time was then duly changed to midnight (found him! Probably at the airport bar) and when, presumably, it came time to board and the poor muddling airline realised that there were now no more passengers to put on the flight since they were all sent home hours earlier, the flight was again delayed until the next day, much to the dismay of two positive thinking, giraffe-toting Swedes who refused to rock the boat and change airlines earlier.

And to add insult to injury, the Piglet tells me today that the entire auction at Sotherbys was cancelled! Reason...someone or something sneakily bought it all before the auction day! Apparently it happens...who knew?

Chance of both happening within 24 hours of eachother...when things start going pear, 100% it seems!