Published: 10 June 2013

AIR Zimbabwe has engaged South African Airways (SAA) to carry out some maintenance check on one of its Airbus aircraft as the airline readies itself to re-launch regional and international flights next month.

Insiders at Air Zimbabwe told Radio VOP that the aircraft maintenance which commenced last week will last three weeks and will enable the ailing airline to start operating the Airbus aircraft at the end of March.

The troubled airline was forced to engage SAA to conduct a bridging check on its aircraft as it currently has no engineers skilled to work on Airbus planes.

Air Zimbabwe has already rolled out an ambitious plan in which it will operate two of its Airbus aircraft on flights to Ghana, Mauritius, Kenya and Nigeria including on the Harare-Johannesburg, Dar es Salaam, Lubumbashi and Kinshasa jaunt.

The airline will also operate one of its Boeing aircraft on flights into the German city of Munich and reintroduce the London-Harare flights, which were suspended in January last year.

Meanwhile, the ailing airline which broke aviation records after flying an empty aircraft from Johannesburg to Harare upon the resumption of regional flights last November will at the end of the month take delivery of two planes from Embraer, a Brazilian aircraft manufacturer.

The government, which is the majority shareholder for Air Zimbabwe sealed the aircraft lease agreement deals last year. The embraer ER jets will complement the airline’s depleted fleet on local and regional flights including Harare-Lusaka, Lilongwe and Johannesburg routes.
- radiovop

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