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Walter Muchinguri Harare Bureau
Air Zimbabwe is aiming to increase its carrying capacity this year through the introduction of new routes and by beefing up its equipment. The airline’s public relations manager, Shingai Taruvinga, said that their main focus will be on expanding domestic and regional routes.
“The reintroduction of the Kariba route has done wonders for the resort town because it’s now bringing in more people and we want to ensure that we link more destinations within the country this year,” she said.
Air Zimbabwe is already working on the reintroduction of the Chiredzi route that is set for this year.
“We’ve a number of routes that we’re looking at but I can’t go into detail at the moment because we’re still finalising some issues,” she said.
The expansion of the route network, Taruvinga said, will be aided by the return of the airline’s Airbus that was being serviced in South Africa.
The 150-seater airbus is a modern aircraft that is more suited for the Harare-Johannesburg route because of its size and low fuel consumption.
“We expect the airbus to be back in service within the first quarter of this year,” she said.
The return of the airbus will result in the airline operating the six planes this year, two Boeing 767s, two Boeing 737s and an MA60.
Taruvinga said that she hoped that their growth strategy, which is linked to the expectations of the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation, will be aided by a reduction in the cost of fuel given that oil prices declined by about 50 percent last year and are still falling with Opec insisting that it will not cut supplies.
Fuel is the single biggest cost for airlines across the world and a reduction in the price will augur well for most airlines.
Turning to the airline’s performance during the just ended year, Taruvinga said the airline faired well especially on the regional routes where it won the best regional airline award from the Association of Zimbabwe Travel Agencies.
“This was a huge vote of confidence for us because we were competing against South African airlines and Comair,” she said.
On the safety front, the airline managed to satisfy all the stringent IATA Operational Safety Audit.
Online Reporter