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He had 40 years under his belt as a firefighter and inspector, but nothing could have prepared Boet Hamman for what he saw when he entered a cluster of dark buildings on Davies Street in downtown Johannesburg that about 600 people unlawfully called home.

Boet Kreiken, the executive vice-president for customer experience at the Dutch carrier KLM, recalled a meeting early in the pandemic, in KLM’s offices near Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport.

“I know in the gut what that feels like. But this was something else. I was staring at the chart and got so involved in thinking about the consequences that the others had to tell me twice: ‘Boet, start the meeting!’”

Boet Kreiken, who once worked for the Dutch Air Force, called the price game “mutually assured destruction”.

“It was double trouble, triple trouble,” Boet Kreiken, the customer-experience chief at KLM, said.