Fastjet Zimbabwe Thursday said it would be introducing flights to Kariba and Hwange in March 2023 as it accelerates a long-cherished plan to completely network Zimbabwe.
The regional carrier currently services the Harare-Bulawayo route, along with the Harare-Victoria Falls one, among its key regional and domestic destinations.
The award-winning airline will be flying from Harare and Victoria Falls to Kariba Airport and Hwange National Park Airport.
In a statement seen by Pindula News, Nunurai Ndawana fastjet Zimbabwe spokesperson said:
We continue to demonstrate our commitment to the growth of tourism and the sustainability of air services in the markets we serve. The addition of these leisure destinations will greatly support our vision.
The Embraer E120 is a robust turboprop aircraft designed for domestic operations, offering customers a pressurised cabin with spacious legroom and overhead baggage space. We intend to align our timings to schedule our flights in such a way that we offer customers the flexibility and convenience of multiple frequencies per day.
Vivian Ruwuya, fastjet Zimbabwe’s Chief Commercial Officer said the introduction of flights to Kariba and Hwange allows visitors in Victoria Falls to explore the wonders of Zimbabwe further by visiting both Hwange National Park and the lake in Kariba. Ruwuya said:
Working closely with our industry stakeholders and partners, including Airports Company of Zimbabwe and the Civil Aviation Authority of Zimbabwe, we continue to explore ways to further develop the domestic Zimbabwean flight network. We are delighted to announce that our new flights to Hwange and Kariba from our tourism hub of Victoria Falls and our Harare base, will be supported with onward connections on Mack Air / South West Aviation into the Hwange National Park, the lodges of the Kariba eastern basin and the camps and operations in Mana Pools and the lower Zambezi. Mack Air with South West Aviation will be developing a new hub at Kariba, along with their existing hubs in Victoria Falls and Harare to support these seamless connections to and from fastjet’s services.
Kariba and Hwange will add to fastjet’s domestic destinations of Harare, Bulawayo, and Victoria Falls, as well as provide straightforward connectivity for international customers flying in from Johannesburg via Victoria Falls to and from Kariba.
The new flights will be available for booking via the fastjet website, App and usual online trade portals in the coming days.
Kariba town, which sits on the east end of the 300km-long Lake Kariba, has been underserved with scheduled flights for many years.
In 2014, Air Zimbabwe returned to the route after abandoning it in 1996 but pulled out within a year.
Early this year, another airline entered the route, but it has since pulled out.
Hwange, another of Zimbabwe’s key tourist destinations, relies mostly on passengers arriving at the nearby Victoria Falls International Airport.
In July, fastjet also introduced flights between Zimbabwe and Botswana to boost tourism in both countries.
This followed another launch in March of a direct flight between Victoria Falls and Mpumalanga in South Africa.