It is 7am on Saturday morning, I am at the airport ticket sales office. I had made an online booking for the 8am local flight, and was to pay on the morning of travel and pick my ticket.

Of course having made the plans myself, I made sure I was at the airport early enough to do all that and have enough time to spare for the security check and all necessary check-in procedures.

I am done in less that 10 minutes and walk to the departure lounge to get a cup of coffee. I am not the only one.
Several passengers are already here and are patiently waiting for boarding time which is 7:40am.

Saturday morning is an easy traffic day since most people are sleeping-in and only those who have made plans to travel that early are up and about.

Boarding time comes and I realise another flight to a destination in a similar direction to mine gets called out first for boarding, and all passengers queue for the process.

Then another announcement comes on after everyone has boarded calling for four yet to board passengers. Their names are called out over the intercom several times. They show up almost 10 minutes later. This means this flight will delay and also cause ours to be delayed too.

Just who makes travel arrangements for this friendly weekend hour and they don’t make it and end up delaying two flights? Both passengers and ground crew take it easy, I guess it is too early for an angry fit.

The four passengers eventually walk in, clearly they are travelling together. No meaningful apologies. Just murmurs about something or other. On a Saturday morning? Not that the apology would make a difference anyway.

They get cleared to board, and the rest of us on the flight with the same departure time, also board. All’s well that ends well I guess.

Not really. We were delayed. If you choose your travel time, it is because that is what is convenient for you, so do other passengers a favour and make it on time.
***

I have always wondered about the on-flight safety instructions on local flights in Kenya. The person giving instructions is hardly articulate, their accent hardly discernable, words poorly articulated and they just end up talking to themselves.

You can tell by the amount of noise passengers are making as they settle down, some reading or already plugging their headphones to listen to something more pleasant.

The pilots are much clearer in their communication and have pleasant voices, so it is not the intercom but the people using it. Kudos to Capt Hussein Amir of KQ.