Cemair Nairobi Flight Bringing South Africans Home Postponed for 24 Hours

Stranded South Africans booked to take a repatriation flight home from Nairobi on Tuesday are furious that the airline postponed the flight for 24 hours at very short notice and refused to pay for their accommodation overnight.

It was the fourth delay in the CemAir flight this month, according to one angry passenger, Kevin Ellis. He said CemAir had not been clear about why the flight did not take off from Nairobi at 1pm on Tuesday 19 May. But it seemed the problem was in getting approval to land the aircraft in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo, on the way back to Johannesburg.

Ellis said that CemAir must have known about the problem since the early hours of Tuesday morning but it had not informed the group of about 20 South Africans who were catching the flight in Nairobi. They had all arrived at the airport about 11am and had checked in for the flight before they were informed it had been postponed for 24 hours.

“And we were told we had to fend for ourselves and that they were not responsible for…