South African Airways (SAA) will resume flights on at least four of its old routes, including Victoria Falls, before the festive season in what it announces as a show of confidence in the Zimbabwean tourism industry, the aviation market in general by foreign airlines and the international community.
Zimbabwe runs an open skies policy, fully opening up its market for those who find it commercially viable to fly into the country and also committed to facilitating local airlines to fly to other regions of the world.
The four resumed SAA destinations are Victoria Falls, Blantyre and Lilongwe in Malawi, and Windhoek in Namibia.
These routes are all set to be opened before the festive season beginning in December.
The additional routes were announced on November 2, along with the announcement that several routes the airline currently operates will receive added flight frequency.
South African Airways also said it will increase the number of weekly flights to Cape Town, Accra in Ghana, Harare, Durban, Lusaka, Kinshasa, and Mauritius.
The increased flight frequencies and added routes are a part of the airline’s pandemic recovery plan. They represent the second phase of the airline’s post Covid-19 restart operation, which started over one year ago.
The airline’s chief executive officer and executive chairman, Mr John Lamola, stated that the resumed routes would also greatly benefit the South Africa economy.
This development comes after Ethiopian Airlines successfully operated their inaugural flight to Bulawayo, becoming the third destination in Zimbabwe that the airline operates into after Harare and Victoria Falls.
Ethiopian Airlines will operate flights to Bulawayo four times weekly using a Boeing 737-800 which will be upgraded to the newer Max 8 on December 1.
The route will be operated as a triangular route from Addis Ababa to Victoria Falls then finally to Bulawayo before returning to Addis Ababa.
Recently, FlySafair also announced that it had received approval to operate flights to 11 new destinations within Southern Africa, following a meeting of the Air Services Licensing Council of South Africa (ASLC).
The ASLC had approved FlySafair’s application to operate flights from Cape Town and Johannesburg to Gaborone, Livingstone, Luanda, Lusaka, Maputo, and Victoria Falls.
In addition, the airline has been approved for frequencies from Johannesburg to Bulawayo, Nairobi and the Seychelles, as well as between Cape Town and Windhoek.
Its applications for routes between Johannesburg and Harare, Windhoek and Zanzibar and additional frequencies to Mauritius are still pending. – The Herald
