A telling moment in the troubled short life of the Civil Aviation Authority of Botswana (CAAB) came last year when a parliamentary committee slammed the six-year-old entity as an “organisation in the ICU”. One legislator said it was in a worse state than “non-performing government departments”. From its evolution into a parastatal from a government department in 2009, CAAB - the public entity responsible for regulating, providing and promoting aviation safety and security in Botswana – quickly turned into the bête noir of the parastatal sector. Dogged by challenges around its organisational restructuring, human resource and stagnant revenues, the CAAB also suffered disgruntlement and demotivation among employees, high staff turnover, and overall sub-optimal performance. More was to come and after an adverse audit, the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) in April 2013 slapped Botswana with two “Significant Safety Concerns” (SSCs) around operations of aircraft and airworthiness of aircraft.The listing effectively placed the local aviation sector on an international blacklist. Botswana was unable to certify airlines who wished to operate local and international flights.
Two airlines, Blue Sky Airway and Daytona Air, were keen to start local and regional flights and had applied for certification. However, any certification from the CAAB would have been internationally hollow as a result of ICAOs SSCs.
