Nine airlines have shown interest in leasing Air Zimbabwe’s
two long-haul Boeing 777-200ERs acquired from Malaysia in a deal expected to
generate up to US$400 000 a month.
Ethiopian Airlines is understood to be leading the pack in
lease negotiations.
Air Zimbabwe’s assistant administrator, Mr Tonderai Mukubvu
of Grant Thornton, said yesterday in an interview with The Herald that leasing
the planes and using the revenue to acquire smaller aircraft to re-establish
strong domestic and regional services made more sense at the moment than
rushing to establish international routes that are expensive to develop.
The lease revenue would also allow Air Zimbabwe to sort out
its financial debts.
Once strong domestic and regional services were in place,
then these would be able to feed passengers into viable long-range services,
the sort of services the long-haul B777-200ERs were designed for.
One of the two B777s has already arrived in Zimbabwe and
the second is expected to be delivered within a few weeks.
Said Mr Mukubvu: “Government has not made any decision on
the final lessee, but we have nine suitors that have shown interest. We are at
advanced stages of discussions with all suitors and they all seem capable to
lease the planes from a financial capacity perspective.”
The process of searching for lessee would have reached
closure much earlier, but the coronavirus outbreak has slowed down the process.
Air Zimbabwe was placed under reconstruction on October 5,
2018, under reconstruction of State-Indebted Insolvent Companies Act.
The company is operating one plane, a Boeing 767 —
servicing Harare-Bulawayo; Harare-Victoria Falls and the Harare-Johannesburg
and Harare-Dar es Salaam routes. Herald
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