Zimbabwe has just announced that the country's two (mostly) grounded airlines -- Air Zimbabwe and Zimbabwe Airways -- are merging. This is just so ridiculous and pathetic. For those of you not up to speed on aviation in Zimbabwe, the country's government owned airline, Air Zimbabwe, was about 300 million USD in debt. So what…
Continue reading: Zimbabwe’s Two (Corrupt, Broke, And Mostly Grounded) Airlines Are Merging
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LOL. When you max out your credit card; you invent a new persona and open a new credit card.
The Creed Bratton way of starting an airline.
Why do you even care? How do you know the essentials of running a profitable airline operation? Hey over yourself.
I flew air Zimbabwe last year from JNB-BYO. We were meant to fly from JNB-VFA, but Mugabe wanted to use the plane last minute, so we were diverted to BYO and put on a minibus for seven hours to VFA. The JNB-BYO sector was on an old 762 in SHOCKING condition, but in all fairness the service and food were actually decent. There were also more crew than passengers (six passengers and about 10 cabin crew). The return, VFA-JNB was on an ancient 732, which was actually in decent condition for its age. It left VFA on time but arrived in JNB an hour late due to an unscheduled stop in BYO, but the food and service were still surprisingly good, especially considering it was a full flight.
I’m just surprised that an airline with 35 year old planes that’s $300 million in debt was able to provide us with a halfway decent meal on a 1.5 hour flight, when many full service carriers around the world don’t provide the same luxury on six hour flights. To be fair, they did try to get us to pay for petrol for the van to Victoria Falls, which we (not so) kindly declined to do...
And now the planes are going to be sold:
https://www.news24.com/Africa/Zimbabwe/newly-acquired-zim-boeing-sold-to-us-firm-for-spare-parts-report-20181125
They had no qualified pilots? Did they make the same mistake as Global Ghana by hiring low altitude pilots to fly a 777 while they should have hired high altitude ones? Can't blame them, it happens all the time.