It's human nature to want what we can't have.... :|
It's human nature to want what we can't have.... :|
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Air Zimbabwe is a Zimbabwean airline which operates both domestic and international. Domestically it operates in Big cities such as Harare, Victoria Falls, Bulawayo etc. Internationally it operates in countries such as England, China, Egypt etc. However nowadays due to the country's economy corruption the services to other various countries and cities has been limited and some services have been stopped. I used air Zimbabwe once when I went to Zimbabwe for a holiday for three weeks. I used air Zimbabwe because it is the only non-stop plane to Zimbabwe and is cheaper compared to other airlines that travel to Zimbabwe such as Kenya airways, BA, Egypt Airways, KLM etc.
However, because I live in England the only airport that air Zimbabwe operates at is Gatwick airport, which I don't have a problem with as I live two minutes drive away from Gatwick airport, therefore it could be a problem for those who live in far away cities such as Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Newcastle etc. People have always gossiped about how air Zimbabwe is unreliable in a way that air Zimbabwe sells its tickets to a lot of people more than the maximum number and it is said to have a first come first serve motto. This didn't put me off as I am the sort of person who believe in coincidence. Nonetheless, my plane was scheduled to leave Gatwick airport at 6:30pm when I got to the airport at around 4:30pm the first thing I noted was that Air Zimbabwe had been delayed by one hour. I was rather annoyed like everyone else.
Before I checked in, I weighed my luggageto see if it didn't go over my limit which was 20kg. Yes, you might think 20kg is less but I had decided to travel light, for those who like travelling with a lot of things you could always buy the other tickets which gave you an extra 10kg adding up to 30kg which is the maximum luggage you could have (not including hand luggage). My return ticket to Zimbabwe with Air Zimbabwe cost me around £640 which I thought was alright although I was disappointed when I found out that if you buy your ticket at the airport the price would be cheaper (by at least 25%)
I got onto the plane and on the inside the plane looked rather old. Some of the seats were looking rusty and some seats were broke. There was no T.V on board even in the first class. When I sat down for the first time, the seat was not as bad as it looked, it was a bit comfortable, but not as comfortable as other planes which I flew with back in the years. The captain introduced himself, afterwards a one of the air hostess made an announcement telling everyone about the emergency exit procedures and other health and safety issues. When the air hostess was talking, the other air hostess were giving demonstrations on how to do exactly what she was saying, e.g. how to put on the life jacket and were to find them. She spoke in three languages which were
Shona (the main Zimbabwean language), Ndebele (the southern Zimbabwe language) and English which is Zimbabwean's Second language. I found this a bit annoying really, as I thought they should have just used English as everyone in Zimbabwe and the majority of the world understands English, this is because i understand Shona, so it's more like a reapetition of things which i understood the first time round...
The services on the plane was pretty smooth. Just after 20minutes of lifting off, everyone was given a complimentary drink and you could chose from fizzy drinks such as pepsi, fanta etc to juices including water. However, alcohol was not offered as it wasn't diner time yet. The air hostess were rather friendly and seemed to enjoy their jobs. After being offered drinks, everyone was given a set of headphones to listen to the provided music. It was very disappointing to find out that the sit I was given, the music was not working. I even tried the radio of the lady sitting next to me and it was all the same. The majority of the passenger's stereo's seemed to work except for mine and the lady sitting next to me. They couldn't really do anything than to apologise. I knew my flight was going to be boring As I can't live without music, and to make things worse I had not brought my MP3 player. The only music I had was on my mobile, and I was not allowed to turn on my mobile. I did turn on my mobile at some point, but got told to turn it off (I was pretty slow in hiding it).
I also realized that my seat did not have a pillow so I pressed the 'service call' button which was beside my sit. It seemed to be working, well I could only tell because the button went bright after pressing it. I waited for a couple of minutes, I now couldn't tell if I was being ignored or the 'service call' system was not working. Lucky enough, one of the air hostess walked pass me and I just asked them to get me a pillow, which she brought back within seconds.
It was finally diner time and it was a choice between beef or chicken. I chose chicken which was mixed in mushroom soup. The diner also included a drink of your choice, mashed potatoes, boiled green vegetables, a bread role with butter, a cake for desert and a cup of tea or coffee with or without milk. My diner was hot and was enough to fill me up, but I would say that for men it might have not been enough to take their hunger away as the food was not a lot. Moreover, if you ask for any alcoholic drinks and you look below 21 years of age they will ask you for some I.D, which is pretty good (only because I'm over 18 now otherwise I would totally disagree with them) lol. Another thing is that the milk provided with the tea was not enough for me, it was a little small tube of milk. It wasn't enough to make my tea creamy, and the sugar was not enough to make my tea sweet. My tea got cold quickly and I never got to finish it as it did not taste nice anyways. After dinner we were all given our flight packs which had some socks, ear plugs, perfume, body lotion, tooth brush, tooth paste, a com, shaving gel, a shaver etc. My body lotion was actually licking so as the lady's sitting next to me (good thing the lotion smelt nice otherwise I would have been angry but I was annoyed).
According to the ticket, my flight was supposed to be non-stop, was very disappointed to find out that we would have to wait an hour in Egypt to pick up Mugabe (the president of Zimbabwe), his wife and the other Zimbabwe government members. We stopped in Egypt, I decided to fall asleep for the hour and wake up later on as we were not allowed to get off the plane. I tried to use the ear plugs as the air conditioners were making a lot of noise. The ear plugs did prevent a little bit of noise, but I wasn't satisfied as I did not want to hear any noise at all. I actually over slept and woke up two hours later and I would have thought that we would have been in the air already, but we were still waiting in Egypt, I was very disappointed. I thought to myself that I should text my dad to tell the person who is picking me up at the airport that I would be late, but I thought I should wait as I didn't know exactly how long we were going to stop at the airport. Everyone seemed to have been mumbling through out the whole stop. Therefore, we were given a cold snack, which included a bread role with cheese or butter, those cheese biscuits that I hate that come in an orange pack (don't know the name), some crackers, tea/coffee, a small blueberry muffin etc. I didn't really fancy anything they gave us except for the muffin.
Another two hours went by and we were still in Egypt waiting, for these last two hours they had been loading the luggage's of these Government members. Finally we were ready to go, I quickly text my dad which cost me 49p. We lifted off and it was the talking air hostess again welcoming Mugabe and his wife etc and she repeated everything she had said whilst we were in England including the health and safety procedure. I could actually see the other air hostess doing the demonstrations from were I was sitting. After listening to 'now' the annoying air hostess, the captain announced that it was going to take approximately 6.5hours to reach Zimbabwe. I was like 'say what' I was actually shocked that I said it loud and everyone was starring. The only good thing the captain said that I wanted to hear was that, we would be given a hot breakfast two hours before landing.
Before falling asleep I decided to go to the toilet. The toilets did not look new just like the rest of the plane, the toilets did not smell though. The toilet door was hard to close, there was water on the floor which seemed to be coming for the toilet area and there was no hand wash. The hand wash basin was not as clean as you would expect it to be and there was water all over the place. I wouldn't really blame air Zimbabwe as it could have been the passengers who did not clean up after using, but the water coming from the toilet, I'd expect them to get an engineer and fix the problem. I went back to my seat, they dimmed the light, if you wanted light you could just turn on the personal light above you by just pressing a little button, mine seemed to work, which was good as nothing seemed to have been working for me since I got onto the plane. They however, did not turn off the air conditioners though it was getting cold. So I just had to use the blanket provided to cover the cold air.
It finally came to breakfast time which was actually 30minutes late. Nonetheless, we was given a small muffin, a bread role with butter or jam, a fruit yoghurt, tea or coffee etc. I really thought this was going to be a hot breakfast, so was expecting things like bacon or eggs etc, but these things were no where to be seen. The only hot thing they provided was tea and coffee, I was very disappointed as all my hopes came crashing down on me. I did manage to get extra milk and sugar for my tea this time, and managed to finish it before it went cold. I really couldn't wait to get off the plane, the flight had not been pleasant at all, the captain kept talking on the mic giving us estimation of how long it will take till landing. He said we would land in bout 10mins which turned out to be double the time. We finally landed at Harare airport and we were thanked for travelling with Air Zimbabwe. Mugabe and his crew got off first via the front exit door and the rest off the passengers got off via the back door a few minutes later. There was lots of people waiting outside to welcome Mugabe and his crew, we were quickly directed to the bus which would transfer us to our terminal.
Three weeks later it was time for me to leave Harare, The was a long queue for checking in, but the staff were pretty fast in checking the passengers in, so wasn't long till I checked in. This time they told me that my hand luggage should be only 7kgs, therefore it was over by 3kgs. They advised me to take some things out and put them into my big luggage which was already excesses by 3kgs but they let me off. I had no problems at the security and immigration office. I sat down in the waiting area, were there was a T.V showing Zimbabwean programmes. One of the staff came to check everyone's passports, if you passport was ok he would sign your boarding pass. It came to my turn, the man just starred at my passport a couple of times and went away without signing my passport, I was really puzzled. A few minutes later two man wearing security shirts came to me and I asked for my passport, I showed them my passport they kept starring for a few minutes. I asked them what was the problem, It turned out that they did not think that the girl on the passport looked like me. I told them it was me and I showed them a few of my other I.D's including my original birth certificate. They finally agreed that it was me, and I asked them to sign my boarding pass, and they told me that the same guy who had approached me the first time had to sign it. I waited patiently for the guy to finish signing everyone's passport and I went to him and asked him to sign, he just put men on hold.
It was time to board the plane and my passport was not signed, I just waited in the boarding queue and was told that I couldn't go into the plane before my pass was signed so I was put aside. I was not actually the only one, there was a few other people without their boarding pass signed. The same man who was signing the passes, came to sign mine and told me to wait again, he called another member of staff for air Zimbabwe to check my passport, I was really getting annoyed and told the guy that I have already went pass the immigration office, so they have no right to stop me telling me I do not look like the girl on the passport. The man thought so too, so he asked him why he kept putting me aside, he started mumbling through out his reasons and finally signed my passport, I was the last person on the plane and the plane was actually 30mins delayed because of me. I was really angry, but did not have time to make a complain about the way I was treated by these air Zimbabwe staff.
Lucky enough I found space to put my hand luggage, I thought I wasn't going to find any space as I was the last person. Another good thing was that, I was sitting next to a celebrity ( I wont say who), he was sitting in the economy class because the first class was full). Just like before, the air hostess announced the health and safety procedure, but this time the air hostess did not do the demonstration, which I did not mind at all. 20 minutes after lifting off we were given drinks but this time they did not have the drink I wanted, I was rather disappointed. Diner time came and it was a choice of chicken and beef again. But this time the meal was a bit different as we had pasta, Pease, salad, tea/coffee, a role with butter, a sponge cake for desert etc. Every meal seemed to come with salt, sugar and pepper and plastic spoons, folks and knives. Moreover, the guy sitting on the middle sit next to our and the girl sitting in front of him were both vegetarian. There were given some vegetarian foods which took ages to be served (they got their diner after I finished mine). I couldn't really tell what they were eating, all I could see was potatoes. This time we were not going to have any cold snacks as we were definitely not stopping in any country. I was rather impressed that we were not stopping for the reason that air Zimbabwe is known to stop in random countries to fuel up the plane as it takes about 10 or 11 hours from Harare to Gatwick airport.
We were given our travel packs which included the same things as before and headphones. This time my stereo was working and it had 10 channels. I did not really care about the stereo at that moment as I was busy talking to my celebrity lol There was a time I went to the toilets and I must say this time the toilets were very clean and there was no water on the floor the basin was also clean, but the hand wash was still no were to be found. Morning came and it was time for breakfast. The breakfast was not as much as before, we had one small croissant, yoghurt with apple, bread role with butter or jam, tea/coffee. When we got to Europe the Captain did some tourist talks telling us were we was e.g. 'we are currently over the English channel etc'. I really couldn't be bothered to listen to him. So decided to listen to the stereo for the last 30minutes. The channels played music from different genres including classic, children rhymes, reggae, pop music, Shona music etc. They hardly played any songs I liked or recognised so decided to switch it off. We finally reached our destination, and I must say I did not have as much problems inside the plane as I did on my other flight, but the UM724 gave me problems before I boarded. Maybe it because my other flight to Harare was a different plane from this one as I came back on a UM724and went to Harare on a UM727 therefore the staff were different and the UM724 did not look as bad as the UM727.
Overall I will not recommend you to fly with air Zimbabwe, the flights were not as pleasant as I wanted them to be and also comparing to other flight I've had with other companies. Air Zimbabwe is rather stressful and I will be avoiding their services In the future. Not having descent music and T.V on board was a real turn off. However, Their cabin crews were friendly and delivered a great service on both flights.
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Quakerman 19.11.2003 (02.07.2007)
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