AIR TANZANIA GETS NEW ACTING CEO
Paul Chizi has recently been appointed interim or acting CEO of ATCL by the Minister for Transport Hon. Omari Nundu, to take over at ATCL with immediate effect.
Paul was previously with Air Tanzania, which he joined in 1979 according to information from Dar es Salaam, before leaving in the airline 2002. He has since been with Community Airlines, which only existed for a short while before moving to Jetlink as their country manager.
He will have the daunting task of getting the ailing airline back into the air, now within reach as government has bailed out ATCL once again by paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for the maintenance of a Dash 8 aircraft, which in February had been flown to South Africa for major work to be carried out on it. In the nick of time, before the aircraft was reportedly put up for auction by the maintenance organization, did the government come through with funds, arguably drawn from other budget lines.
When this single plane returns to service, TCAA is currently evaluating the maintenance work with the ultimate objective of either awarding or not awarding a Certificate of Airworthiness, it will make Air Tanzania once more the runt of the litter of the present aviation industry, as it will have to compete against the well oiled machinery of Precision Air and others which have taken over ATCLs market share and are flying more frequencies to more destinations now than even Air Tanzania of old did not manage to do.
Sources close to ATCL have also off the record indicated that the airline may have to resort to wetleasing aircraft for the time being to offer a viable service level on key routes from Dar es Salaam to Kilimanjaro / Arusha, to Mwanza and to Zanzibar, before considering a wider network both domestically and regionally. Generally, without being recapitalized by government and finding finally a partner willing to take on the problem riddled carrier, ATCL is thought to have only a limited future and might never rise to its former level again.
