Saying Good-Bye to DBN:A Final Flight
We're all getting misty-eyed over the new King Shaka airport, but let's pause a moment and say good-bye to the old Durban International. . . in the most South African way possible.
I was lucky enough to be on the final SAA flight into Durban on Friday night, arriving from Port Elizabeth around 7pm. I say lucky because the cabin crew kept reminding us of the fact. "Hey, this is the last time we're coming here! Woohoo! Isn't it cool and a little sad? Awww." Or something like that.
So we taxi down the runway fifteen minutes ahead of schedule while the pilot bawls his eyes out, I've now had two bottles of the always-stellar airplane wine, and we're all surreptitiously competing to see who can turn their phone on first without getting caught by the stewardess. As I stand crammed into the aisle with fat businessmen and sms my flatmate that I've arrived early and he needs to get his ass there immediately with some better wine, we here the cheerful voice of the pilot again, saying something like "Soooo, we're waiting for the buses. Shouldn't be long now."
This is followed by "Yeeeaaah, there seems to be a delay with the buses. Sorry. They're sending one now.
Ten minutes later: "Ummmm, it seems there are no buses. The buses have all gone to the new airport already. They're sending a taxi to take you in groups of ten." This was followed by two mid-sized guys with laptops attempting to hurdle over seats and old ladies in an attempt to get further up the aisle into one of the first groups. I contented myself with crushing feet and bashing elbows with my camera bag, and made it into the third group.
Half an hour after landing, I sail through baggage claim (since our bags hadn't had to wait for the kombies) and push my way through the supposedly teary-eyed crowd, past the abandoned shops and restaurants onto the pavement to find E.
What I find is chaos. Streets are blocked off, re-routed, gridlocked, and the police are observing it all with a tired and faintly amused look of apathy. I throw my bags into the car and dive into the backseat in a mad attempt to avoid E's having to pull over, and at last we slide into the bumper-to-bumper traffic leaving the airport.
Thinking the situation would improve once we got onto the highway, we were shocked to see dozens of blue lights flashing at us like a Hannukah bush along the road. They were stopped in lanes, slowing lanes, blocking fly-ons, and generally playing the part of traffic tokoloshe in order to (we saw eventually) escort the bloody airport buses to King Shaka's airplane kraal.
I'm not sure if they were worried that the buses would be hijacked, bombed, vandalised, or just get lost along the way.
Luckily we had plenty of time to get where we were going, and plenty of booze when we got there. I have to admit that it was a fittingly Durban way to say good-bye to the old airport: a teaspoon of after-thought fanfare, a tablespoon of apathy, and about a cup of fuck-up.
