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Innocent Ruwende in Victoria Falls
A low-cost airline — Fastjet — will introduce budget flights between Harare and Da res Salam (Tanzania) in August this year as the country opens its airspace to increase connectivity. The flight will cost as little as US$50. In an interview on the sidelines of the 9th edition of Routes Africa Forum currently underway in Victoria Falls, Fastjet chief commercial officer Mr Richard Bodin said the flight would commence on August 5.

“We have launched a new international route from Da res Salam in Tanzania to Harare. Fastjet is a low cost carrier which means we offer low fares,” he said.

“The key message would be affordable fares. We can offer $50 airfare from Harare to Da res Salam which we think is very exciting.” Fastjet will fly twice a week on Tuesday and Saturday.

Addressing a press conference earlier, Tourism and Hospitality Industry Minister Engineer Walter Mzembi said there was need for Africans to disabuse themselves from the notion that airline travel is only for the rich.

“The Harare-Victoria Falls route at $500 for a return trip is arguably one of the most expensive 45 minutes of travel in the world. You cannot stimulate demand if you charge anybody $500 to just displace them from Harare to Victoria Falls when they are displaced from London to Paris for just under £50,” he said.

“So when visitors and travellers make a choice on where to go to they are actually put off by some of our very exorbitant travel costs and we hope that in future interactions between travel and transport we interrogate our costs model that is offending the travelling public to this extent.”
Minister Mzembi urged Air Zimbabwe to revisit its fares.

“It would definitely steer demand but $500 between Harare and Victoria Falls certainly will not stimulate demand and I hope we can look intimately in these costs structures.

“We need to bring back school tourism and civil service travel incentives where civil servants are afforded one holiday a year to distress. The demand has to be stimulated somehow and be driven by tourism. If we had the right aircraft and configurations I am sure would be able to charge fairly,” he said.

He bemoaned a proposal by the African Union to charge $10 per passenger to raise a budget for the organisation.
“If we have run out of creativity, you tax customers. We are lobbying to have that tax scrapped because it is tantamount to introducing travel sanctions in the market through taxing. You do not open up by having taxation,” Minister Mzembi said.