[ellenstaylor@yahoo.com]

My husband and I flew South African Airways from Cape Town through Johanesburg and on to Livingstone, Zambia in September 2009. During that flight, my husband's entire suitcase was stolen, never to be seen again by us, and someone rifled through my suitcase and pilfered items. We filed the apppropriate claims, but South African Airways has pretty much refused to recompense us for loss. They did finally send us $400 but the claims were for nearly $2000. They keep sending us nicely worded polite emails (and one letter) but the bottom line is that they deny responsibility. When we got back home, I looked up their record and found that a few years ago they had such problems with their baggage handlers stealing items that they started a new program of sealing the suitcases in plastic. Evidently this plastic sealing is not done any longer because we never saw any suitcase so protected while we were flying around South Africa. With the World Cup coming to South Africa in 2010, I think the world should know not to fly on South African Ariways since the airline cannot control their employees and hence no checked baggage is safe from being opened and things stolen from it - or, in the case of my husband, the entire suitcase being stolen. In some of their emails they admitted they had a bad problem with their employees stealing, but they seem to do nothing except tell the passenger to file a claim on his/her own insurance. I am angry and disgusted that they treat passengers this way and continue to get away with it. Stay away from South African Airways.