Zimbabwe’s national flag carrier, Air Zimbabwe, had all its five aircrafts grounded due to technical problems on Tuesday forcing the airlines to hire a plane to fly their customers from South Africa to Zimbabwe, reports Zimbabwe Independent.
“The situation at AirZim really got bad on Tuesday. No past chief executive has ever experienced what happened when five planes were grounded for being un-airworthy. By late Tuesday frantic efforts were being made to bring back one bird to the sky. As of Wednesday the Airbus was operational and it was servicing the Victoria Falls route,” said an aviation industry source
The national airline has been struggling with debt in excess of 330 million USD, an issue that has discouraged strategic partners from engaging to grow the airline’s market share. AirZim is technically insolvent and operating at less than a third of that capacity.
The national airline has also incurred cumulative losses while relying on Treasury for survival. With the economic woes in Zimbabwe & foreign currency shortages, things are getting worse for the airline.
The airline has blamed its struggle to purchase spare parts for maintenance of its fleet on the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe delay to release of foreign currency.
Ethiopian Airlines, Africa’s largest carrier, recently told the Zimbabwe Independent that it is ready to rescue AirZim, but this depends on the will of the government.
Air Zimbabwe management has proposed the issuance of ordinary shares to raise US$30 million, restructuring of the current debt through the issuance of money market instruments to current creditors and issuing a 10-year corporate bonds to current creditors and third-party investors up to US$200 million to reduce the debt overhang affecting the entity.
