VICTORIA FALLS INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT MUST STAY OPEN FOR FOREIGN AIRLINES
(Posted 27th June 2019)
Information is emerging from Zimbabwe that attempts are being made by near defunct national airline Air Zimbabwe’s administrators, to restrict foreign airline to landing only in Harare and leaving the last leg flight to the national airline.
One Tonderayi Mukubvu was quoted by local sources in Harare to have advocated for blocking foreign airlines from accessing Victoria Falls and Bulawayo, claiming the airline would then be able to pick up more traffic from Harare to those two airports.
The suggestions were promptly dismissed by a wide number of tourism stakeholders from Zimbabwe in messages to ATCNews and one source close to the Civil Aviation Authority of Zimbabwe too questioned the sanity of the proposal while saying: ‘Zimbabwe has spent a lot of money to modernize and expand Victoria Falls’ airport. The authority has been vehemently marketing flights by foreign airlines directly into Vic Falls so that through more landings and take offs, more passengers, the country can begin to recover this massive investment. Air Zimbabwe’s operational record in the recent past has been far from satisfactory and one must doubt their claim, more of wishful thinking, that they could fly additional passenger loads from Harare to Vic Falls, on time, all the time. We cannot upset tourists with flight delays after our tourism marketers have succeeded to get them come to Zimbabwe and in fact many now combine a visit to Vic Falls with other African destinations. Vic Falls is linked by for instance Kenya Airways to Cape Town and to Nairobi and they have traffic rights both ways. We risk losing such tourists if one poorly performing airline had its way. Our national interest must come first which is why airlines like RwandAir for instance have fifth freedom rights from Harare to Cape Town. It benefits our economy. Local airlines claiming they can perform better must show a clean record first‘.
While Harare is being served by a number of international airlines, besides locally incorporated Fastjet with several daily flights to Johannesburg, is Victoria Falls still trying to attract the likes of Emirates, British Airways and Lufthansa.
Ethiopian Airlines from Addis Ababa is already serving Vic Falls with a B787 while South African Airways offers a daily Airbus A330 service from Johannesburg, with connectivity from much of their network.
Meanwhile has another regular contributor of information from Harare also pointed out that Air Zimbabwe only recently sought government approval to dispose of much of their mothballed or even derelict fleet.
It is understood from the source that the airline has two B767 and three B737-200’s in storage, as does it have Chinese built MA60’s. .
The age of these aircraft ranges between 32.5 years – a B737-200 – and 13.5 years – a MA60.
Left without much of an operational fleet has the airline, besides it financial woes through long standing debts, struggled with operational challenges such as timely departures.
‘They want to bite more than they can chew‘ quipped the source when sending in the above details also saying that Zimbabwe’s tourism industry depends on foreign airlines flying to Harare but also to Victoria Falls and Bulawayo and that the country can ill afford to do without them. ‘Finally let us not forget that right across the river and falls is Livingstone in Zambia and should Zimbabwe restrict foreign airlines flying into Vic Falls, they can just shift to Livingstone and the loss will be ours entirely.
