Review of South African AIrways flight from Johannesburg to Perth in Economy

Background

Hi, welcome to my first flight report.
After an 11 flight trip across Southern Africa (no reports on those flights) it was finally time to leave. SAA only relaunched service to Perth on  April 28th as they slowly rebuild their intercontinental network, with Perth and São Paulo being their only destinations outside of Africa.
This flight was only around R6,700/US$365, and perhaps more importantly, it will be operated by the increasingly rare Airbus A340, of which SAA only has one left (ZS-SXF) which is now used almost solely for the Perth route. In time it will probably switch to the A330-300 but for now, it's a great way to fly the A340 before they disappear from the skies.

Check-in/Johannesburg Airport

Named after Oliver Tambo, a prominent figure in the struggle against apartheid, JNB is the largest airport in Southern Africa and the largest in Africa after CAI. It's a massive hub for regional and intercontinental flights, and one of the main hubs for all the major South African carriers.
In the last 17 days, I've taken 9 flights to or from JNB, from an Air Mauritius A350 to an Airlink Embraer 135 to a 737-300 that SAA is leasing from Africa Charter Airline, and many more. This SAA A340 will be one of the most interesting of them all.

There were no staff at economy check-in so everyone had to go to the Premium or Platinum check-in. As usual for South Africa, there were no lines at check-in and so it only took a few minutes.
SAA recently celebrated their 90th birthday, and the number 90 shows up across the airport and on the aircraft.

There wasn't any line in security either, but only one counter was open in immigration so there was a bit of a line there. JNB, and all the other South African airports I've visited, are very efficient and it only took around half an hour to go from checking in to clearing immigration.

The departure board really shows how much of a global and African hub JNB is. Just this evening they have flights departing to cities on five continents, from Maputo to Newark.
The first screen, right before Perth appeared on it:

And the second, right after Perth moved onto the first screen:

When entering the gate area, there is a secondary security check to make sure you aren't taking any liquids on board, even if you bought them after security. Apparently it's an Australian government requirement, although I don't remember experiencing this before any other Australia-bound flight. Luckily the nearby gates had no flights and so there was plenty of seating available outside the liquid-free area. There was plenty of time before the flight so it made sense to wait there and finish drinking any water or drinks instead of throwing them out.
(I found out later that if you want to take drinks onboard, you need to get the shop that you bought them from to deliver it to the gate)

A bit of planespotting:
UA 787 heading to Newark

The picture is a bit blurry but between the Fastjet Zimbabwe ERJ-145 and the FlySafair 737s, you should be able to make out a Uganda Airlines CRJ-900 about to depart for Entebbe - a very long flight for the little CRJ.

This picture was actually taken from my seat onboard: Ignore the ET plane and look instead at the Embraer next to it. Although it's a Airlink aircraft and they've had it for a few years, the tail is still painted in BELAVIA Belarusian Airlines colors. It's one of the most interesting planes I've seen at JNB.

Every few minutes, the departure board would switch and, just for a few seconds, show this series of departures. If you look carefully, you'll see SA286 to Hong Kong scheduled to operate, although it hasn't flown since before the pandemic. It's not a codeshare with Cathay either; this was an actual SAA flight from several years ago. The Airlink flights on the board have the old Airlink livery and SA flight numbers from when they used to be South African Airlink, a partner of SAA. I have no explanation for this unless it's randomly showing flights from 2019.

Finally it was time to finish the last of the water and board.

Aircraft INFO & Boarding

This flight will be operated by ZS-SXF, an A340-300 built 19.3 years ago. Other than a two-year lease to India's now-defunct Jet Airways (although there have been attempts to restore Jet Airways, it's unlikely that what used to be India's best airline will ever fly again) from 2005 to 2007, it has flown for SAA since it was built. While SAA's A340s once flew to destinations as far as New York and London, these days ZS-SXF only flies to Perth and Mauritius, with São Paolo and their longer African routes flown by A330s.
When boarding commenced, just about everyone ended up in the Premium boarding line since the economy side was partially blocked off. At first people were sent around to join the economy line, but eventually they gave up and boarded many people from the Premium line anyway.

So most people went on the left side.

And here it is! ZS-SXF itself, the last of a once mighty fleet of SAA A340s, waiting to fly us to Perth tonight.

Seat & Amenities

According to Seatguru and the SAA website, their sole A340 has a pitch of 33"-34", much better than the 32" on the 787-9s that Qantas flies between Sydney and Johannesburg, the only other nonstop flight between South Africa and Australia.

Unlike their A330s, SAA's A340 has not been refurbished well, and the plane shows its age. In-seat charging is only available in J and IFE screens are old and difficult to use. The tray tables are hard to open and close, and one of them felt like it was about to break. The plane is also not the cleanest.
On the bright side, the headrests are very adjustable, and each seat has a blanket and pillow. Another pro was that there were a few empty seats around me, so I moved from 70 back to 71 and got a row to myself.
The contents of the seatback pocket are: The Sawubona magazine, a duty free shopping magazine, a safety card, an air sickness bag, and headphones.

Shortly after boarding ended, amenity kits were distributed. This is a really nice touch and something that even carriers like Cathay Pacific and Virgin Atlantic neglect in economy.

The amenity kit had socks, an eye mask, a toothbrush, and toothpaste. The eye mask had two strap things instead of one, and it even had a special flap for your nose, which I've never seen in economy.

Soon, it was time to takeoff and say good bye to South Africa. It had been an interesting trip, but it had now come to an end.

IFE

We were welcomed onboard and the standard announcements were made: flight time, names of the crew, etc. After the announcements I decided to explore the IFE.

I was prepared for there to be no working entertainment on this flight and had downloaded some things to watch beforehand. But after takeoff, the screens slowly started flickering to life, a few at a time. At least 85% percent of them worked. Unsurprisingly, the screens were extremely slow to respond, even to the remote.
The selection of games and movies was better than I had expected. It wasn't easy to get anything to work, but I had prepared for worse and was happy that it even worked at all.

They had quite a few games, movies, and shows on offer (I didn't take pictures of it all, but there were several pages of everything), plus a large selection of music and information about SAA. After a few long-haul flights with SAA it might start to get boring, but there was more than enough for this overnight flight.
Of course, it was an ancient plane, there was no wi-fi, and everything was very slow. I tried to play a game but the remote wouldn't work properly, I tried the aisle seat screen but that wasn't much better, so I had to watch a move instead. Sometimes the screens randomly turned off, and every time there was an announcement and the entertainment was paused, when it was unpaused the movie would fast forward a minute or two, so you'd miss something every time. 
It wasn't Cathay or Singapore Airlines, but overall it was sufficient entertainment.

First Meal Service

The meal service took a while to complete. First, the FAs gave everyone a bottle of water and offered additional cold beverages. I got a mixed fruit juice.

The full bottle of water was a nice addition. Full cans of beverages were handed out, as is normal in South Africa. The juice was… interesting, but not bad.
After a while they started serving meals, starting with special meals. I didn't hear the whole menu as the announcement was pretty unclear, but there were three different meals including one vegetarian option. For all the meal and beverage services on this flight, one set of FAs started in the front and one in the back for each aisle, to expedite the service. Meal service started around an hour after departure.
My pre-ordered VJML:

As is the norm for SAA, even on domestic flights, metal cutlery was provided. The meal didn't come with butter to go with the bread (this is something that happened on all my SAA flights - are they confusing vegetarian with vegan?) so I asked the FA for some when she came by with the other meals. She was very apologetic and gave me a butter off another tray.
I'd like to mention here that the crew were very friendly the whole flight. They were happy to chat and joke with passengers and were very personal in their service.
The meal was actually very good. SAA usually does a great job with catering (you'll see why I said usually when the second meal comes).

In-Flight

After the meal, the crew came back with more beverages, this time including warm ones. I got rooibos tea (when in Rome…):

The 90 years branding is present even on the napkins.

Soon the trays and trash was all cleared away and the light were dimmed. By this point we were already a few hours into the flight. I used the bathroom a couple of times… I don't have any pictures but the toilet wasn't very clean.
After that I finished my movie and tried to sleep. I only got a few hours of sleep but it was enough. I watched the sunrise somewhere over the Indian Ocean when I woke up (no pictures of that, sorry).

This was our location around the start of the second meal service:

Second Meal Service

Maybe an hour and a half before landing the second meal service started, and this was where my biggest issue with the flight happened. I had a VJML again:

So part of the breakfast was mushrooms, but this is a Jain meal and Jains don't eat mushrooms. I'm not Jain but I also don't eat mushrooms which is part of the reason I got this meal. Unfortunately putting mushrooms in Jain meals is something I've experienced before with SAA. I understand that they might not be able to cater to different diets, but in that case they shouldn't offer Jain meals.
Anyway, I had the bread and the fruit, I wasn't that hungry so it was fine.
There was no pre-meal beverage service, but there were two after the meal, just a few minutes apart. The first time I got an apple juice:

They didn't offer ice this time.
The second time I just got some water:

Soon everything was cleared away and we prepared for landing. 

Arrival

The standard pre-landing announcements were made. A biosecurity announcement from the Australian government was played, and we were told to fasten our seatbelts, raise our seatbacks, etc, although the FA accidentally said "for takeoff" instead of "for landing".
Some pictures as we got closer to Perth:
Rottnest Island

The beautiful A340 wings and winglet, the ocean, the first views of the Australian coast, and Perth from the air:

The Swan River and downtown Perth:

And finally…

Welcome to Western Australia!

Perth Airport

We made our way to the gate. Not much interesting planespotting in Perth, mostly just Qantas/Virgin 737s and Jetstar/QantasLink A320s.
Last picture of our A340 wing:

Immigration in Perth Terminal 1 is pretty fast, especially compared to the Qantas part of the airport, T3/4.

Baggage collection and the biosecurity check took a bit longer than usual. Apparently they were training their dogs, so there was a lot of waiting for the dogs to smell the bags.

Everything was completed by around 1:30pm and the Southern African trip had come to an end.

A very blurry picture to end this flight report. Thanks for reading.