ZIMBABWE: Fly Africa, When Are You Resuming Flights? When Are You Making Refunds?

Fly Africa has finally broken their silence, yet only to throw more sand into the eyes of unsuspecting passengers who may not have followed events closely since the airline was grounded in Zimbabwe on the 28th of October.

December 1

flyafrica.com would like to assure all passengers that we are working tirelessly to resume operations as speedily as possible and remain positive this will be accomplished soon.

Should your flight be cancelled you will be notified accordingly. Passengers booked on www.flyafrica.com via our Call Centre or a Sales Office will be notified of the cancellation of their flight via email and/or sms. Travel agents with clients booked through their reservation systems on flyafrica.com will be notified of the cancellation with an update in their client’s reservation. To call a flyafrica.com sales representative please use one of the following numbers +27 10 100 3540, +263 86 770 00312, or +264 83 330 0370.

All flyafrica.comp assengers impacted by these flight cancellations will be offered a refund for their cancelled flight in the original form of payment.

Passengers who have had their flights cancelled are asked to submit a refund request online;http://flyafrica.com/en/main-menu-bar/contact-us. Passengers booked through their travel agent are asked to submit their refund request directly with their travel agent.

End quote

This string of assurances has for the past weeks set one date after another when the mouthpieces of Fly Africa gave hope to passengers, only for such dates to come and go without a single flight taking off. At least these mouthpieces learned one thing apparently, that setting a day and then not fulfilling it was a recipe for growing anger, frustration and worse.
From information at hand are passengers starting to seek legal advice over having bought tickets at a time when it was all but clear the airline would not fly and having to wait too long for refunds while their money, when paying for instance with credit cards, ended up in the airline’s coffers in seconds.

Refund deadlines too are now stretched from 30 to 40 DAYS to 30 or 40 WORKING DAYS, sorely testing the patience of those even further who have been struggling to get their money back from an airline which has not been flying for weeks. What, one wonders, does all this mean, for those waiting for their money and for those who are sitting on it?

Not one passenger has yet commented on the airline’s Facebook page that he or she actually has received their money back and the airline has not responded to the publicly asked question just how many refunds they have processed since the 28th of October.

‘Mr. Adrian Hamilton-Manns – how many refunds has your grounded airline paid out a simple number will do BUT put that number against the other not yet paid refunds so that the public can see just where Fly Africa presently stands’.

Will an answer be forthcoming? Not likely as the management of the company sits in their ‘Wagenburg’ trying to keep themselves together and very likely even looking into the mirror without a feeling of guilt or shame or remorse.

The saga hence continues and feedback is now also awaited from the Namibian Directorate of Civil Aviation over the status of the airline’s AOC there, either directly or via Nomads Aviation after the DCA in Windhoek had also pulled the airline’s operating permit after consultations with their Zimbabwean counterparts.

Ooh, what are you upto, Fly Africa?

ZIMBABWE: FlyAfrica, Why Sell Tickets Yet You Are Not Allowed To Fly?

Considering the ‘Wagenburg’ mentality the airline’s top management and their mouthpieces have shown in recent days was it no surprise, that when posting searching questions on their Facebook page and challenging them to tell the truth and nothing but the truth, they resorted to the childish measure of blocking this correspondent, making it impossible to do any further posts.

This is in line with prior behaviour, when they first lied about the question if they were operating, when clearly they had no longer an AOC and were effectively grounded by the Zimbabwe Civil Aviation Authority but nevertheless said yes.

They then promptly spoke of this correspondent making wild accusations before threatening to sue, a laughable suggestion when all which was reported here was based on the facts of the case.

Now the airline is continuing to mislead customers when they say: ‘In a welcome judgement issued by the Zimbabwe High Court on Tuesday 17 November, flyafrica Zimbabwe won its legal case that found local partner Chakanyuka Karase had acted illegally and with malicious intent to damage the airline by seeking to ground flyafrica Zimbabwe. We have begun work on restarting the airline and are working with the regulators to resume flights on Tuesday 24 November. We will update everyone as soon as we have more information’ when all the court did was granting an injunction against the local partner not to interfere in their business until the main case is heard.

The court also told the airline, something the airline is clearly shy to share, to put their house in order after accepting a report from the Zimbabwe CAA over various regulation violations, as reported in great detail here in earlier editions.

Justice Tsanga clearly said in her ruling that while the letter from the local shareholder to the CAAZ was damaging, it was merely exposing the chaos in the organization: ‘Whilst the letter by Mr. Karase was damaging, it was in the sense exposing the depth of the problems that applicant was facing. This was against the added backdrop of what emerged to CAAZ as being compounded (by) its management impasse, which it could not simply overlook in terms of safety implications’ did the court say.

So why is Fly Africa acting the way they are if, as they suggest, they won their case (Ahem) and have nothing to hide?

The questions posed to Adrian Hamilton-Manns were straight forward, asking: as ‘How many tickets has Fly Africa sold for flights within, from and to Zimbabwe since the 28th of October? How many refunds for such tickets affected by the flight ban have been processed so far? Have you now finally stopped selling tickets until CAAZ has restored the AOC? When will the airline provide full disclosure about what was known when?

Not telling the full truth and trying to shoot the messengers is clearly not a behaviour airlines should be allowed to get away with as it suggests they are hiding things from the public, which in the aviation business raises all sorts of alarm bells. The court’s mention of ‘safety implications’ is a grave matter, as is taking money for tickets in a flash and then hiding behind technicalities to not effect an equally prompt refund. Passengers are rightly outraged that they should wait for 30 or 40 days to get their money back, apart from the apparently appalling service they received from the airline as many comments on the Facebook page of Fly Africa continue to attest to.

It can only be hoped that the Zimbabwe Civil Aviation, in full exercise of its powers, will ensure that the Fly Africa AOC is only returned when all their concerns have been addressed, in order to protect the travelling public from what falls under the broad meaning of ‘safety implications’- apart of course from the issue of refunds for which many passengers have been waiting since the airline was grounded over three weeks ago. Keep watching this space for future updates, as and when new developments can be reported.

ZIMBABWE: Court Rules Against FlyAfrica Over Safety Concerns

Fly Africa’s management must be in panic mode now that a court in Harare made public what has been whispered behind closed doors and in the corridors of the country’s aviation industry: Serious safety concerns need to be addressed first before the airline can resume operations, dealing a blow to Fly Africa from which it may not recover.

‘PUT YOUR HOUSE IN ORDER’ did Justice Amy Tsanga of the High Court in Harare tell Fly Africa, a sharpish warning that if the safety concerns which were unearthed when the Zimbabwe Civil Aviation Authority took a closer look at the airline, are not addressed immediately they may never get their AOC back.

CAAZ carried out detailed investigations, according to information received from Harare and during the process established that the airline had apparently no substantive accountable manager in breach of Part 99.2.2.2 of the applicable Statutory Instrument.

It was apparently also established that Fly Africa was registered in Zimbabwe but effectively controlled from South Africa, again in violation to relevant regulations.

To make matters worse did Fly Africa not have a local head of maintenance and the maintenance manuals were reportedly not compliant. Towards that end did the CAAZ indicate and confirm that the letter written from the local shareholder was not the reason for the suspension of the airline, but it only triggered the authority’s independent investigations to suspend Fly Africa’s operations for safety reasons.

Justice Tsanga, obviously in reaction to the report compiled by CAAZ, which justified the suspension of the operations of Fly Africa, advised the airline to put its house in order first, if it was serious about the lifting of the temporary ban. This applied to local rules and regulations must be observed instead of complaining about the CAAZ decision

Justice Tsanga also said in her ruling that while the letter from the local shareholder to the CAAZ was damaging, it was merely exposing the chaos in the organisation. ‘Whilst the letter by Mr. Karase was damaging, it was in the sense exposing the depth of the problems that applicant was facing. This was against the added backdrop of what emerged to CAAZ as being compounded by its management impasse, which it could not simply overlook in terms of safety implications’ did the court say.

This leaves the operation of Fly Africa in Zimbabwe in tatters and another date will pass without operations resuming.

Now clearly is the time for CEO Adrian Hamilton-Manns to answer some searching questions, such as ‘How many tickets has Fly Africa sold for flights within, from and to Zimbabwe since the 28th of October? How many refunds for such tickets affected by the flight ban have been processed so far? Have you now finally stopped selling tickets until CAAZ has restored the AOC? When will the airline provide full disclosure about what was known when?

Not that answers are expected since the airline has gone into ‘Wagenburg’ mode and has only issued statements which did not at any time refer to the safety issues quoted by the court nor apparently processed refunds. In fact have comments on the airline’s webpage become so stinging and explicity that the entire section on their Facebook page were removed, leaving only direct comments to the wishy washy statements issued since the 28th of October, a day when an innocently posed question ‘Are you flying’ was answered with what in diplomatic terms would be called misleading. What followed were panicky reactions speaking of the media making accusations, before taking it to the next level of threatening to sue for exposing the unfolding saga. Events since that day however have proven that the airline remains grounded for the foreseeable future until the CAAZ can be sure of full compliance with Zimbabwe’s air service regulations, local regulations and laws.

Commiserations to the affected passengers, albeit with a grain of salt, that they should have known better than to book and pay for tickets on days where it was clear for industry observers that the airline would not, could not fly.

In a related development was it also confirmed that the Zimbabwe Civil Aviation Authority is finalizing arrangements to designate other airlines for the routes Fly Africa holds but cannot fly, to provide Zimbabweans and visitors from outside with other options to reach Harare and Bulawayo. Watch this space for future updates as and when more information is available.

TANZANIA: Fastjet gets Rights To Fly To Comoros But Kenya Still Refuses

Tanzania’s largest airline in terms of passengers uplifted, has secured traffic rights between Dar es Salaam and the Prince Said Ibrahim International Airport on the Comoros main island of Moroni.

Information sourced speaks of initially two flights per week between the Tanzania and the Comoros, which will increase as demand for seats and cargo goes up.

This makes it Fastjet’s sixth African destination out of Dar es Salaam after Johannesburg, Lusaka, Harare, Entebbe and Lilongwe, while their application for landing rights in Nairobi continues to gather dust in the deepest dungeons of Kenya’s Civil Aviation Authority.

‘Other countries want us to fly to their capitals’ said a source close to the airline before adding ‘Why the Kenyans do not want Fastjet to fly there remains a complete mystery. All prerequisite criteria have been met, all the boxes have long been ticked but it seems that the KCAA is now changing the size of these boxes and wants crosses instead of ticks? Are they for real?

They are setting the worst possible example for the opening of the African airspaces. Have they ever heard of Yamoussoukro or the fact that Kenya signed on to the AU protocol about liberalizing air transport?. Their protectionism will come back to haunt them when TCAA again enforces the present BASA’.

Fastjet in Zambia is also reportedly now very close to attaining their Air Operator Certificate which will allow them to launch flight operations out of Lusaka, presently served daily in conjunction with Harare.

The Zimbabwean launch at the end of October proved highly successful with already over 3.500 seats sold on the route between Harare and Victoria Falls. Discussions with the CAAZ are reportedly continuing about adding Bulawayo and Johannesburg as next destinations, after Fly Africa continues to postpone their relaunch following their grounding by the CAAZ when their local partners handed in the airline’s AOC at the end of October. Sources close to the airline in Harare have confirmed that once the additional routes have been secured that an additional Airbus A319 aircraft will be deployed to Zimbabwe more or less immediately to have enough aircraft on the ground to serve the additional destinations.

ZIMBABWE: Fly Africa Crashes Down, Grounded

Fly Africa’s operations have been suspended after the airline surrendered its operating licence due shareholding disputes and failure to meet statutory requirements.

The low cost airline’s planes have been grounded after the Civil Aviation Authority of Zimbabwe (CAAZ) suspended the airline’s operations.

Earlier this week, the airline surrendered its operating licence citing operational challenges. Close sources say the decision to surrender the operating licence is a result of boardroom squabbles and shareholding disputes.

The airline has local and foreign shareholders. Apart from the internal disputes, the airline has not been remitting passenger services charges to CAAZ.

Information gathered also reveals the airline aircraft were not based in Zimbabwe while the company did not have an accounting manager in violation of Statutory Instrument 140.2010.

Transport and Infrastructural Development Minister Dr Joram Gumbo confirmed the development, adding that after surrendering the operating licence and failure to meet the regulatory requirements the airline’s operations had to be suspended.

“After surrendering the licence and failure to meet the regulatory requirements, the airline’s operations have been suspended,” said Dr Gumbo.

The budget airline’s board chairperson Professor Chakanyuka Karase could not be reached for comment.

There was drama at the Harare International Airport on Tuesday when passengers had to be asked to disembark from the plane.

Despite surrendering its licence, the airline had booked passengers, prompting CAAZ to intervene for the safety of the passengers and to enforce the law.

The airline was licensed by CAAZ in August 2014 and introduced its first aircraft in the same month to service the Victoria Falls-Johannesburg route.