Ethiopian Airlines Bombardier DHC-8-Q400 © Bombardier Victoria Falls International Airport, located in northwestern Zimbabwe, will see its first scheduled intercontinental passenger flights next year after EW Discover (4Y, Frankfurt Int’l ), the new Lufthansa long-haul brand, announced the start of a 3x weekly return service to the resort town from Frankfurt Int’l via Windhoek Int’l , Namibia starting on March 30, 2022.
Lufthansa’s General Manager (Southern & East Africa), André Schulz, confirmed to ch-aviation the airline has not been granted fifth freedom traffic rights on the Namibia-Zimbabwe sectors and vice versa but is working on attaining such. Fifth freedom rights would entitle the airline to fly from Germany and pick up revenue passengers in Namibia and carry them on to Zimbabwe, and vice versa.
The Zimbabwe government has previously granted fifth freedom rights to Kenya Airways (to Cape Town ), RwandAir (to Cape Town), and Ethiopian (to Gaborone ) through Victoria Falls in the interests of driving up tourist inflows to the region, situated along the Zambezi river. During the last decade, it spent over USD200 million to build…
Black-owned South African-based Takatso Consortium has been selected as the new 51% preferred strategic equity partner (SEP) of South African Airways (SA, Johannesburg O.R. Tambo ), with the government retaining a 49% share, Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan told an online media conference on June 11.
The consortium comprises of Harith General Partners, a leading investor in African infrastructure and airports including Lanseria , and ACMI specialist and airline management firm Global Aviation Operations (GE, Johannesburg O.R. Tambo ), which also owns the virtual airline brand Lift Airlines (GE, Johannesburg O.R. Tambo ).
Gordhan said the intention was to list the new SAA to address future funding requirements. The government would maintain a non-dilutable "golden share" of 33% of the entity’s voting rights to protect certain areas of national interest such as ensuring that it remained domiciled in South Africa and achieved national transformation goals.
To start with, the consortium would inject over ZAR3 billion rands (USD221 million) into the new SAA and raise further capital as needed. The government would not provide…
Editorial Comment: Updated with additional comments by Harith spokesperson Khaya Buthelezi. – 12.06.2021 – 15:32 UTC
A new national civil aviation policy being drafted in Ethiopia may open up opportunities to the country’s fledgling private-sector aviation industry, according to Endashaw Yegezu, director of economic regulation and strategic management at the Ethiopian Civil Aviation Authority (ECAA).
The […]
