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.

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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?

NAMIBIA: FlyAfrica Namibia Grounded For Flying Ineligible Aircraft

Namibia flyafrica
Type Scheduled Carrier
Base Windhoek Int'l
Destinations 3
Routes 2
Daily Flights 4

Contagion from the Zimbabwe flyafrica (Z7, Harare Int'l) fiasco has spread to Namibia where the Namibian Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) has now grounded Namibia flyafrica (N6, Windhoek Int'l) for using ineligible aircraft.

In a statement issued November 5, the DCA said its decision was premised on Namibia flyafrica wet-leasing B737-500s from its Zimbabwean sister carrier despite the latter's Air Operators Certificate (AOC) having been suspended late last month.

"The DCA has now also received official communications from the civil aviation authorities in South Africa and Zimbabwe regarding the operations of FlyAfrica," the DCA said. "In fact, Bay Air Aviation’s partner in Zimbabwe which enabled their Namibian operations have had their Air Operators Certificate suspended by that country’s civil aviation authority. Despite this development FlyAfrica continued, without consulting the DCA beforehand, with flights utilising planes not authorised by the Namibia DCA."

The carrier has since been forced to suspend operations until the DCA has successfully completed a re-validation mission and given it the greenlight to resume commercial services.

flyafrica has issued a statement in which it alludes to resuming operations from Thursday, November 19 though this is still subject to the outcome of a court case in Harare. flyafrica says it is in talks with the Civil Aviation Authority of Zimbabwe (CAAZ) to reinstate its AOC, surrendered in late October by local shareholder and now former CEO, Chakanyuka Karase. flyafrica Ltd has also filed serious fraud and theft charges totalling more than USD140,000 against an unspecified member of the Karase family.

"Unfortunately we are still waiting for court rulings and are working with Namibian and Zimbabwean civil aviation authorities to resolve the matter," the LCC said in an official statement. "The length of wait is uncertain and we are advised it can take between 1 to 5 days for a decision to be reached, currently we are at day 4 of the process. We acknowledge that judicial processes take time and we kindly ask our loyal passengers to have patience as we let the judicial process run its course."

ZIMBABWE: FlyAfrica Zimbabwe Comming Back Again

The announcement yesterday by Fly Africa, that they will operate later today a flight between Harare and Johannesburg, has set tongues wagging among Zimbabwean and Southern African aviators.

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flyafrica.com

1 hr

flyafrica Zimbabwe to operate Harare – Johannesburg on Thursday, 5th November

flyafrica Zimbabwe is pleased to announce that it will operate on the route between Harare, Zimbabwe, and

Johannesburg, South Africa on Thursday 5 November. The flight from Johannesburg is scheduled to depart at 16.00 and will return from Harare at 18.05

flyafrica Zimbabwe is devoted to achieving a fully operational service on all Zimbabwean routes as speedily as possible thereafter.

In order to meet the expectations of loyal customers, flyafrica Zimbabwe has made the decision to combine passengers on the Johannesburg to Harare and Harare to Johannesburg routes on 5 November. Passengers booked for the 6am flight to Harare will be offered to depart on the 16.00 flight from Johannesburg. Passengers booked for the 10.00 flight to Johannesburg will be offered to depart on the 18:05 flight from Harare.

“We are fully committed to our loyal passengers and we are delighted to get partial operations up and running again tomorrow” saysflyafrica.comCEO Adrian Hamilton-Manns. “We apologise profusely for the disruption and inconvenience caused to our passengers and their families and are working around the clock to resume full operations as soon as possible.”

flyafrica Zimbabwe’s Bulawayo and Victoria Falls routes unfortunately remain suspended. An announcement on the resumption of these routes will be made as soon as possible.

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One particular source from Harare subsequently suggested that the continued absence of Fly Africa from the domestic route between Harare and Victoria Falls could indicate that their Air Operator Certificate allowing them to operate domestic flights had not been restored as of the time the statement was made. The same source also suggested that the service announced for Harare – Johannesburg was in fact only a return service of a flight originating in Johannesburg which could be operated under the airline’s South African AOC and traffic rights but may not in fact be a flight covered under the AOC which the CAAZ suspended at the end of October.

Continued and often very negative comments posted on the Fly Africa Facebook page www.facebook.com/flyafrica also indicate a growing anger among the airline’s erstwhile passengers who have since looked and very likely found alternative flights to travel on as they literally voted with their feet by walking away.

An added statement by the airline in regard of their Namibia operation too has swiftly prompted a number of comments, some of which were already posted days ago and mentioned here when a flight between Windhoek and Lanseria failed to operate, stranding scores of passengers at both airports.

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flyafrica.com

3 hrs·

flyafrica Namibia has unfortunately had to cancel today’s flights between Windhoek and Johannesburg as well as Windhoek and Cape Town due to the Namibian Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) authority requesting additional documentation in respect of the aircraft that flyafrica has been utilizing to fulfill the operation. The requested documentation was unable to be delivered to the Namibian DCA in time to allow today’s flights to operate as scheduled. flyafrica Namibia is working with the DCA to ensure that Friday’s flights will operate as scheduled. We would like to apologise to our passengers for the significant inconvenience caused as a result of today’s cancellations by flyafrica Namibia.

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Additional investigations and information obtained from local Namibian aviation sources however reveals a very different picture. It appears that national airline Air Namibia went to court to halt advertised flights between Windhoek and Johannesburg for lack of Fly Africa holding traffic rights, at which stage the South African destination was changed to the smaller Lanseria airport. This again appears to have prompted a challenge in court by the national airline, not only vis a vis Lanseria but also vis a vis Cape Town and that hearing is still due to take place but expected to produce a similar outcome as the initial challenge over destination Johannesburg.

Investigative findings also suggest that the legal platform used for the Fly Africa flights could be a company named as Nomad Aviation (PTY) Ltd. The Namibian Director of Civil Aviation, one Ms. Angeline Simana Paulo, has subsequently come under intense scrutiny over decisions taken in favour of Nomad Aviation, which while holding an AOC for ‘large aeroplanes’ as outlined under the Civil Aviation Regulations of Namibia (NAMCARS Part 121) has reportedly failed to meet the stringent criteria to put a B737-500 on their AOC.

Considering the fact that a number of ICAO consultants are presently working with the Namibian Directorate of Civil Aviation it will be of keen interest to see how they, tasked with improving the regulatory and supervisory environment of the Namibian DCA, will react or report back to ICAO in terms of present day compliance.

One thing again is painfully obvious for Fly Africa, that continued flight cancellations, for whatever reason, in both Zimbabwe and Namibia have caused them some serious problems in regard of public perception over how forthcoming they were with their statements, with added unanswered questions what they knew and when they knew it in the time frame of eventual disclosure.

Other airlines in the region will no doubt be the main beneficiaries of these rocky times for Fly Africa in Zimbabwe and Namibia and once the market is saturated with doubts and mistrust the outcome will be almost predictable.