Everything you need to know about travelling to South Africa

A number of readers have come forward in recent weeks having experienced difficulties travelling to South Africa with a child.
                                           

The latest letter came from Telegraph Travel reader, Joanne Caputo.

Joanne Caputo, writes:

In June my husband accompanied me to Gatwick Airport to travel to Cape Town via Dubai with our four-month-old son so I could visit my grandmother, who is 90, for a few days.

It’s too expensive to take the whole family to South Africa during the school holidays (I’m a teacher) so I bought a cheap off-season flight. I checked online what documents I needed (or thought I had) and knew I had to carry my son’s unabridged birth certificate. I had a letter of permission from my husband, and his passport.

Gill Charlton, consumer expert, replies:

You are the third person to contact me in as many weeks to say they’ve been refused travel to South Africa as a lone parent because they don’t have a parental consent affidavit.

An affidavit is a signed letter sworn under oath in person before a solicitor or a commissioner for oaths. It costs £5. This requirement has been in place since June 2015 when the South African Department of Home Affairs brought in new regulations to prevent child trafficking. All children under 18 must travel to South Africa with their unabridged birth certificate showing the names of their parents – even if travelling with them. If the child is accompanied by one parent, South African immigration requires consent – in the form of an affidavit – from whoever is registered as the parent on the birth certificate.

Your confirmation merely states that you should contact the visa agent CIBT to check entry requirements and that Travel Up is not liable for denied boarding due to invalid documents. Emirates could perhaps have flown you the following day as a goodwill gesture if you had booked direct with them, but it could not change an agency-issued ticket.

A handheld travel device helping millions to connect through language

Having recently completed a round-the-world-trip, I can tell you first hand that the translation functionality of your smartphone is a godsend. And I can also tell you firsthand that the associated app-jumping and the strain it puts on your poor phone’s battery life is anything but.
                                   

A personal voice translator device, Travis is capable of instantly translating between 80 of the world’s most common languages with the click of a button.

Travis (the device) was designed and created by Travis (the company), a small firm founded by Lennart van der Ziel and Nick NM Yap, which started with just those two and has since grown to now have teams working across three continents — North America, Europe and Asia.

The device is nicely pocket-sized, and uses advanced AI to recognise what language is being spoken, analyse and translate it, and then relay that translation in your chosen preferred language — all within the system itself, with no need to bounce between apps!

Travis is able to be used with headphones with a built in mic; so if you want to go on a tour, or attend a show, or even if you’re simply riding public transport, Travis will listen to the information being presented, and deliver it directly to your ear, without giving away your secret.

Even though the campaign has now long since finished, Travis was so popular he is now available InDemand, so patrons can still head over to Indiegogo and secure themselves a travel buddy, and with an estimated shipping date of September, he could make the perfect Christmas present.

SAS could one day travel through space to get to war zones in an hour

Special Forces troops could travel through space to get to war zones in future, the head of the American air force suggested yesterday.
Chief of Staff General David Goldfein raised the prospect of elite troops travelling on a mothership to anywhere in the planet within an hour.
                                                 

Speaking at an air power conference in London, he said the military needed to 'jump on' industry plans when it came to innovative technology.
He referred to Sir Richard Branson's company Virgin Galactic, which plans to make intercontinental space travel a reality.

The entrepreneur has announced plans to launch people into space in 2018, with the first test flights beginning this year.
He is convinced that eventually the costs of space flights will come down and the fuel savings on intercontinental flights using a low Earth orbit will make travel from one place to another commercially viable.

He said: 'The question for us is what does that mean if I take seven special operators, put them on this and then can get to any place on the planet in less than an hour?
'What does that do to us and what does that do for us in terms of all of the scenarios that we think our way through?
'This is the technology that commercial industry is now going for. With all of the challenges that we have talked about there is such opportunity for us if we can just jump on it and grab it.'
Also speaking at the conference, Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon said young people needed to be reminded of the stories of Britain's 'great inventors and imagineers'.

Slump in travel to and from Qatar as thousands of airline bookings are cancelled

Airlines are cancelling a large number of passenger bookings to and from Qatar after four Arab countries severed diplomatic and economic links, endangering Doha’s hub status for international travel.
                                               

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt cut ties with Qatar on June 5, imposed a travel ban and imposed a no-fly zone over their air space for Qatar-registered airlines and aircraft.

The cancellations are for all dates, including forward bookings.

Arabian Gulf airlines, including Saudia, flydubai, Emirates, Air Arabia and Etihad, flew frequently to and from Doha before the ban. Rival Qatar Airways also had a number of flights heading to and from the four countries.

The travel ban has had a widespread impact on passenger demand, especially for Qatar Airways, and the longer it carries on, the worse it is expected to become for Gulf carriers, according to some analysts.

"For passengers, the ban has resulted in restricted travel choices and in many cases, people are cancelling travel plans altogether," said Saj Ahmad, the chief analyst at London-based StrategicAero Research. "The impact of cancellations would be far greater for Qatar Airways than any other Arabian Gulf carrier because the Doha-based airline is banned from flying to several countries."

Qatar Airways, which is part of the 15-member oneworld alliance, had built Doha into an international hub, competing with Dubai and Abu Dhabi for long-haul travel. The Doha-based carrier has amassed stakes in companies such as IAG, owner of British Airways, and Latam Airlines, Latin America’s largest carrier, to expand its global reach.