SAA resumes Malawi flights

 South African Airways (SAA) yesterday resumed direct flights between South Africa and Malawi three years after the airline suspended its operations in the country due to financial challenges.

In the meantime, SAA will be flying twice weekly from Johannesburg to Blantyre and Lilongwe and back using its workhorse Airbus A320 aircraft.

Speaking after disembarking at Chileka International Airport in Blantyre to mark the official launch of their operations in the country, SAA chief executive officer John Lamola said the resumption of the services will increase competition and boost economic activities.

He said: “The potential of Malawi as a tourism destination is amazing. Our coming back to Malawi will help increase competition now that we have added another carrier. This will definitely affect pricing.

“Less than two percent of Africans travel by airline. We are dedicated to raise the number and make flights accessible.”

Lamola added that their coming will help create jobs and support the Malawi economy.

 He played down fears that the shortage of foreign exchange which is persistent in the country would affect their business, saying: “The forex problem is not only in Malawi. It is throughout the African jurisdiction where we fly through. It is a risk factor that we will mitigate.”

On her part, Minister of Tourism Vera Kamtukule said the flights will boost the country’s tourism sector.

She said: “We want to bring as many people as possible to Malawi, but the key challenge has been, how do you get to our country?”

Malawi High Commissioner to South Africa Stella Ndau said the resumption of the airline operations into the country will help increase Malawi’s accessibility to the rest of the world.

She said: “For us to grow into a self-reliant country as stipulated in the Malawi 2063, we need to be accessible to the entire world and regional hubs. And we need different airlines to increase competition.

“From South Africa, we only had Malawi Airlines but still, we had some challenges. But the coming in of SSA will help foster regional integration.”

The SAA suspended its operations in Malawi during the time of travel bans in 2020. Their departure left air travellers in Malawi vying for either Malawian Airlines or Ethiopian Airlines.

Meanwhile, the air transport industry continues to show positive recovery from the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic that led to travel restrictions and eventually closure of airports to commercial air transport activity.

According to the Malawi Government 2023 Annual Economic Report published by Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs, airlines have responded positively to the steady increase in demand

 for travel by increasing their frequencies in and out of Chileka and Kamuzu International airports.

The same goes for the charter operators who primarily service the tourism industry by carrying tourists to some local hotspot attractions such as Likoma Island.

As a r e sul t , revenue performance has picked up in the past two years. For 2022, the target was revenue collection of K2.6 billion with K3.2 billion being realised as of December 2022