Swaziland wants a new national airline

MBABANE – Swaziland is to have a new national airline, according to government officials. The airline is required to make viable a new international airport under perennial construction in the lowveld wilderness east of Manzini. The airline could start offering service in April 2014. Solomon Dube, director of the Swaziland Civil Aviation Authority (SWACAA), promised that the R1-billion airport – whose original opening was to have coincided with the 2010 FIFA World Cup in SA – would begin operations in late October or early November. With November half over, Dube confessed the reason for the airport’s disuse: no air carrier wants to use it. “They all demand that we have a national airline that will transport the many passengers they would be transporting from all over the world to southern Africa. They tell us they do not want their important passengers to be stranded in a Third World country and therefore if we want them to use our airport we should also have a national airline which would work with them (taking passengers) to places like Zimbabwe and Botswana for example,” Dube told the Swazi media this week. Dube said that unnamed European and Middle-Eastern air carriers had agreed “in principle” to use the airport, but no contracts had been signed. A single plane of the type the new national air carrier requires would cost around R700 million. Dube did not reveal the cost of creating and running an airline. The last effort at a government-owned and managed airline, Air Swazi in the 1980s and 1990s, flew to Botswana, Kenya, SA and Tanzania. Low passenger volume, virtually nonexistent air freight volumes, corporate mismanagement and government’s inexperience in running an airline led to the carrier’s demise, according to former Minister of Transportation Titus Mlangeni. Dube did not say how many routes would be offered by the national air carrier, nor how many aircraft would be needed. Government is already a majority stakeholder in Swaziland Airlink, which handles the only air route into and out of the country, to Johannesburg, but with erratic passenger volumes. Critics of the new airport have long questioned the viability of the new facility, intended to replace the existing facility at the Matsapha Industrial Estate. SWACAA has projected that 300 000 passengers annually will use the new airport, far in excess of current air traffic in Swaziland. “The business would have to come from abroad. That’s why government wants a new airline so it can market the airport as a feeder airport to passengers’ primary destinations,” said Mbabane businessman and frequent flyer Mark Dlamini. “Dube and the Swazi Government have forgotten one important point – the only reason passengers would fly to Swaziland would be because the kingdom is their final destination. If they wanted to go to some other country in southern Africa they would fly into airports in neighbouring SA and take existing routes to their intended destination,” said commentator Richard Rooney on his Swazi Media blog this week. One Swazi aviation expert contacted by FTW said the new airport and new national airline would be used only as “backups” by European and other air carriers in case Johannesburg’s international airport was shut down in an emergency. Otherwise the Swazi airport is redundant regionally and needs to find another business model, he said. INSERT A single plane of the type the new national air carrier requires would cost around R700 million.