SAA keen to help Air Malawi
by Frank Phiri, 05 July 2006 - 05:24:03 South African Airways (SAA) is keen to help Air Malawi facilitate inward and onward connections for passengers in a bid to share revenue and grow traffic, Marketing and Operations Manager Gray Ndovie said Tuesday. Ndovie’s remarks come in the wake of the failure by Air Malawi to book passengers seeking onward domestic connections in South Africa beyond Johannesburg International Airport. Air Malawi Acting Chief Executive Officer Wisdom Mchungula confirmed the development in a separate interview, saying it had arisen due to shortage of foreign currency in the country. “It’s a problem which we expect to be sorted out by the end of this week. Scarcity of foreign currency is one of the contributing factors,” said Mchungula. Ndovie said SAA is not accepting bookings from Air Malawi because the national carrier is in default of fare payments for June. But he said the default issue notwithstanding, SAA is eager to work closely with new management at Air Malawi for smooth business relations between the two carriers. “The previous regime looked at us as rivals to an extent that they did not like to facilitate smooth connections for our passengers. But with the currentCEO, we think that things will work out and we don’t want them to be left out,” Ndovie said. He said SAA has since joining the Star Alliance—a club of the world’s leading airlines—required other smaller partners to venture into specific agreements to allow sharing of customers. Due to financial problems arising from successive years of losses, Air Malawi has in recent months been struggling to service its liabilities, particularly for tickets sold through the International Air Traffic Association (IATA) arrangement. IATA acts as a clearing house for airlines that share passengers under its agreements. Mchungula confirmed in a recent interview that the airline at some point in April owed IATA about US$400,000, which, he said, has since been settled.