On Thursday October 3rd, Air Tanzania Company Ltd in a letter shared with all travel agents revealed suspension of the national carriers’ flights off Johannesburg, South African route over insecurity issues.
This was after an Air Tanzania Company Ltd Airbus A220 had been detained for weeks by a South African Court at Johannesburg’s OR Tambo Airport citing private individual’s debt claim against the Tanzanian government and also, during the time, South Africa had a lot of unlawfulness when citizens held exacerbated xenophobic attacks on foreigners living and working in the country who were prospected to also be part of the Airlines potential clients.
ATCL managing director Ladislaus Matindi revealed that they regret “to inform you that, effective October 7, 2019 and onwards, all tickets sold for route Dar-JNB-Dar shall be refunded and route suspended until further notice.’’
The airline said all tickets for the Dar-J’burg-Dar route already sold to passengers but still unused would be refunded.
Matindi directed that questions about the route suspension be forwarded to Works, Transport and Communication Minister Isaack Kamwelwe.
In September, Mr Kamwelwe issued a statement hinting at the suspension “for security reasons.”
Mr Matindi added that the airline is finalising plans to embark on the Far East routes to China and Thailand by close of the year.
Mr Matindi said ATCL’s grand expansion strategy will also include the launch of regular flights to Lubumbashi, Lilongwe, Lagos, Accra and London.
The national carrier is making these potential routes a priority so as to firstly promote tourism in the country and second, to compete with other established airlines in the aviation industry, he said.
Eight new planes have been purchased in the past three years, with six of these already delivered and two more set for delivery by 2021. The airline had only one working plane before President John Magufuli launched the revival plan in 2016.
The government budgeted Tsh495.6 billion ($216 million) for aircraft purchases in financial year 2018/19.
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