From  BusinessReport

Swaziland’s new airline will fly to 10 destinations in Africa and the Middle East, government aviation authorities say.

The cost for starting and maintaining the airline is necessary to ensure usage of a completed but vacant new international airport, but the venture will leave the small landlocked country virtually penniless.

“The airline will fly to destinations such as the United Arab Emirates, Kenya, Ethiopia, Zambia, Rwanda, South Africa, Namibia, Tanzania, Uganda and Botswana, among other [destinations],” Solomon Dube, the director of the Swaziland Civil Aviation Authority, said last week.

The purchase price for a new passenger jet is about R700 million and the total cost in plane purchases to service the 10 routes would be approximately R7 billion.

The Central Bank of Swaziland said the country’s gross official reserves at the end of last year stood at about R8bn.

Dube, whose department would create and run the new Swaziland airline, said passenger fees would generate income to cover the R3bn construction costs of the Sikhupe Airport.

User fees will be doubled from the current R50 at the existing but under-utilised national airport near Manzini.

Written by Titus Gwebu | Read more at BusinessReport