Hello, I'm Simon Calder and you are very welcome to the Independence Daily Travel Podcast.

Today, the subject is Diversions. The reason I'm talking about this is because of what's happening

tonight to the poor passengers on Virgin Atlantic Flight 450. This is the regular

nightly departure from Johannesburg non-stop to London Heathrow aboard a beautiful, big shiny

Airbus A350 which is most definitely my favourite long haul aircraft.

But unfortunately, it's not going to be non-stop.

Oh no.

People are going to board.

They are going to spend two hours flying directly away from Heathrow.

They're going to be flying south to beautiful Durban on the coast there.

Then they will be flying past Johannesburg on an extended flight back to London Heathrow,

arriving three hours behind schedule.

How annoying is that? Well, very, actually. But these things happen.

The reason that this one has happened is because, well, unfortunately, they've run out of fuel at Johannesburg Airport.

Well, they haven't completely run out,

but depending on which bit of the South African news media you are following,

they're down to anything like three days or a day and a half of fuel.

And clearly, South Africa, Johannesburg,

very long away from an awful lot of places which want to go there and back,

and you're going to need to fill up those tanks. The reason there's a fuel shortage, well,

there's been on and off fuel shortages, but in particular, terrible floods in the province of Kuala Lutal

means that some of the key roads are out and Johannesburg has been in the province of Kualzulu Natal means that some of the key roads are out

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