Unusual flight home for Cayleigh
The flight attendants were amazing and could see how desperately the group of South Africans wanted to get back home
Cayleigh de Beer’s video snippet of cheerful flight attendants singing to South Africans on their flight home from Italy certainly gives one goosebumps. After matriculating from Creston College last year, Cayleigh, who is from Port Shepstone, went to au pair for a family in Soave, a commune in Verona, Italy. “I always wanted to see Europe and I fulfilled my dreams of taking a gap year and travelling.”
However, Italy was badly affected by the Covid-19 virus. “The cases were rising by thousands a day and we were the country with the most deaths. I was in Northern Italy where the virus was a lot worse than in the rest of the country.”
Cayleigh said when the coronavirus hit South Africa, and was getting dramatically worse in Italy, she decided the safest option would be to return home – but due to lockdown it was almost impossible. Then, the embassy contacted her, saying there was a government repatriation flight from Rome back to Johannesburg for SA citizens.
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“As it was a repatriation flight, there were only South Africans on board.” said Cayleigh. “It was so cool to have a whole flight of just South Africans who had been stuck in Italy, having shared a similar experience. It was definitely not a normal flight. The flight attendants were amazing and were very cheerful. They could see how desperately the group wanted to get back home.”
Cayleigh said the flight attendants played the song ‘Africa’ by Toto just prior to take-off. Upon landing, ‘My African Dream’ by Vicky Sampson welcomed them home.
The flight, she said, was unusual, with random spot temperature checks, even if they were asleep. Cayleigh added they had waited in the cargo terminal as they were not considered commercial passengers. “Our flight was delayed by six hours and we had to fill in a lot of police forms before leaving. We were also screened and had to fill in a form detailing any symptoms we thought we had, and give the contact info of people we had been in contact with.
“When we landed, we stayed on the plane for about an hour until the Department of Health had checked our temperatures again, and we had filled in more forms.” Cayleigh is currently in quarantine at a hotel in Eastgate.
Watch the video on the Herald’s Facebook page
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