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According to a story carried in yesterday’s Chronicle, some travel agents are no longer including Air Zimbabwe on their schedules, meaning to them it is as good as dead.
The story further reports that foreign airlines are moving in to fill the void left by the suspension of operations by Air Zimbabwe on some routes.
Particularly lucrative is the Johannesburg-Victoria Falls route, which even the British Airways-run Comair cannot ignore despite all the noise from Britain about the “situation here”.

A lot has been said about problems bedevilling the national flag carrier and what is needed now is action.
If no action is taken, it will be a matter of time before Air Zimbabwe is consigned to history as has happened to other  state-owned carriers on the continent  which suffered from inadequate Government funding and the opening up of skies.

What is saddening about Air Zimbabwe is that its woes are not about the absence   of business. From the story and the  way regional airlines have increased he frequency of their flights to Zimbabwe, it seems business and passengers are  there.
What needs to be done is change Air Zimbabwe’s way of doing things. Government must take the bold step of taking over all the debts of the beleaguered airline and recapitalise it to enable it to buy new aircraft that will attract passengers from competitors.

Air Zimbabwe must be allowed to start on a clean slate, meaning that after  clearing the debts, the board and management must be replaced by fresh blood that can inject new ideas into the airline.
With proper funding and good management, African airlines can compete against the best in the world.

Ethiopian Airways is rated among the  best not only in Africa but in the world because it has had the necessary support to enable it to acquire a modern fleet.
An example of the vision of that airline is the decision to become one of the first in Africa and the world to acquire the recently released Boeing 787 Dreamliner jet.
Such an acquisition will enable Ethiopian Airlines to compete with any airline  in the world, which sadly cannot be said about Air Zimbabwe, whose main attraction to customers seems to be sentiment, cost or that there is no alternative.

And Ethiopian Airlines is owned by the Government.
If the Government feels it does not  have the resources to recapitalise Air Zimbabwe, the next step would be to privatise the airline and allow people or organisations with resources to take over.
Either way, Air Zimbabwe must not be allowed to die.