By: Kelvin Chiringa
National career, Air Namibia has announced that it has joined hands with South Africa’s KwaZulu Natal in their Do KZN campaign to promote tourism on both sides of the border.
Air Namibia will commit to flying tourists to KZN and promote the local destination, thus making the deal a synergic win-win situation for Namibia and South Africa.
KZN’s regional coordinators Minenhle Mhlongo and Mawande Bantwini were on a charm offensive this past week at Country Club where they met with the local media before interacting with Windhoek at Groove Mall.
They said KZN was rich with the history of celebrated 19th Century King Shaka as well as some of the most epic battles fought with Europeans which are all punctuated by scenic places and opulent lodges.
Air Namibia said at present the route to South Africa is doing well, as with daily flights on the Windhoek-Gaborone-Durban route it was carrying about 56% average load factor by the end of December 2018.
Presently the route is generating a positive operating margin of 17% while 24 111 passengers were carried during the period of 2018.
This route was launched during October 2016 following a comprehensive route network development review.
“Barely six months after introducing the WDH-GBE-DUR flights, Air Namibia increased capacity to 112 seats, using the Airbus A319. The development was done to help accelerate growth rate of the newly introduced route, while offering our customers more options including business class seats and opportunities to transport cargo,” said Air Namibia’s corporate communications department.
From June 24 2018, Air Namibia made a change to its Embraer fleet, operating five fights weekly.
Since the introduction of the Embraer Jet on this route Air Namibia said it had spillage and load factors in excess of 85% average per flight during August 2018.
They further increased flight frequencies from five to six on the Windhoek-Gaborone-Durban route with effect from 25 September 2018 and to seven per week from October the 28th.
