Pilots crisis grounds Air Botswana

KETO SEGWAI
Staff Writer | Friday May 4, 2007 00:00

 

The state airline has been in the news recently as government and Parliament fight over its planned privatisation. Yesterday Air Botswana general manager, Lance Brogden, acknowledged to Mmegi that they had a very tough day. However, he downplayed the incident, which he insisted was not a crisis.  'It happens occasionally in the aviation industry. Our pilots ran out of flying time and we didn't want to jeopardise the safety of our passengers.'

Brogden said they took a combination of measures that included hiring planes from other aircraft companies and recalling one of the Air Botswana's pilot on leave to rescue the situation. Mmegi is reliably informed that the national carrier hired two planes from a local aviation company and one from  South African Airways. Aviation sources wondered why Air Botswana failed to take appropriate measures to avert the crisis as the writing has been on the wall for sometime. Mmegi learnt that about eight pilots have left AB in the past year. The latest is a long-serving and highly respected Ethiopian known as Mengistu, who departed last month. The exodus has apparently led to the over stretching of the few remaining pilots, resulting in the gobbling up of their flying hours.
Air Botswana staffers blame management's administrative inertia and indifference.  One employee, who preferred anonymity, bitterly charged that the general manager has never shown interest in the management of the airline.  'All he is concerned about is the privatisation of the airline.  He does not call any meetings despite the problems bedeviling the company.  He is not managing. Period!'

Another employee added that the staff is always in the dark about what is going on in regard to the viability of the airline. 'Since the beginning of the year, we have never been briefed by the general manager - save for a short memo he sent out. The human resources manager had a short inconclusive brief but that's not enough.  In times like this, we need the top guy to share with us information.

'The way things are, we feel worthless.  One can't even make plans that go beyond 24 hours.  We are here, and we know nothing about what is happening to the company on which out livelihoods depend.  All that we know is what we read in the papers,' he said.
Yesterday's crisis comes hardly two weeks after the launching of the lucrative tourism season by the Hospitality and Tourism Association of Botswana (HATAB) in Kasane. Mmegi is reliably informed that by yesterday, Air Botswana flights were fully booked.