It is amazing what you can do with taxpayers’ money, and how badly a business can be run, when it does not have to make a profit itself. The website invariably does not work, putting you through a torturous process of completing a booking by the end of which it then advises you that the booking has failed. If you then try to do the booking again it tells you that you already have a booking – except that if you try and search on your booking you will find that you have none. Phoning the call centre is not much better – you get put on hold, 12 or 13 minutes into the call the call is lost, and nobody phones you back. The second time I phoned, after I had been one the phone for 15 minutes, the lady advised me that their systems were not working properly and she would have to put me on hold while she checks on another system. It basically becomes impossible to actually give them your money and if you are foolish enough to believe in Voyager miles and the like you will find it impossible to actually find any flight where there is a Voyager flight available, particularly in business class, so you can accumulate the miles for all you want, but you will not be able to use them most of the time, if at all. Due to a lack of available flights, I personally have now accumulated over 750,000 miles, and every single time I try to book a flight using them, there are no flights available even though the website shows that there are. Twenty-two minutes into the second call, after I have been put on hold by a lady who promised me that she would not put me on hold, I gave up. It will not be a surprise to read of SAA’s continuing losses in years to come, because their systems and some of their staff are incompetent (I have also had some very positive and useful people help on the phone previously).