Air Botswana To Test Waters In Phikwe

Ivy Matlho | Monday February 15, 2016 15:18

 

He said it is important for Air Botswana to carry out research first to see if there is demand of flight services to Selebi-Phikwe.

“SPEDU has written a letter to our general manager asking us to bring our services here. We are still to do research so that we see how many people need our services,” he said. Modise said the research will not take a long time to be completed and if the results are positive they will then consider SPEDU’s proposal.  Modise said part of the research will be to offer their services once a week in Selebi-Phikwe to gauge if indeed people here need their services. “We might also consider using the airline here once a week as that will be easy for us to determine the demands for it here. I encourage you to utilise that chance well as it will be part of the research,” he said.

Modise also said Air Botswana has improved their services because in 2014 most of their customers complained about their failure to be punctual.

He said some of the delays were caused by faults in the flights hence forcing them to fix them before take off.

“It is now more than 12 months without us receiving complaints relating to our failure to be punctual,” he said. “Our customer safety comes first; sometimes the delay was caused by faults in our flights and we could not fly without fixing the identified faults,” he said.

SPEDU mining, infrastructure and manufacturing manager, Theodore Seemule, said SPEDU decided to negotiate with Air Botswana to start offering their services because they want the refurbished airport to be utilised. He said it was not going to make sense for them to use more than P14 million to refurbish the airport and not utilise it.

“We want this airport to be utilised because we have spent a lot of money refurbishing it and it will be waste if we do not use it,” he said. He added that SPEDU has engaged business people and sold the idea to them and they have given them a positive response.

“We engaged businesspeople here and they have shown interest to use flights if Air Botswana starts offering their services here,” he said.