15 Feb 2017

Botswana skies were fully liberalised on November 3, 2016 hence they are fully open, Minister of Transport and Communications Mr Kitso Mokaila has said. Responding to a question in Parliament, Mr Mokaila said open skies involved operators who had been designated to operate scheduled services into the territory of another country. “Such operators can fly from their country to any point in Botswana and the designating country can designate as many scheduled operators as they wish, hence the reason we have operators from South Africa such as South African Express Airways and South African Air Link,” he said. He said Ethiopian Airlines were also exercising open skies operation and they were allowed to access fifth freedom classic rights, in that they could pick from Gaborone to any destination beyond Botswana. Mr Mokaila said, “there is no domestic monopoly by Air Botswana since any operator wishing to operate scheduled services within Botswana is allowed to do so. It is only that there is no illegible operator to operate scheduled services in Botswana other than Air Botswana.” The Specially Elected Member of Parliament, Ms Bogolo Kenewendo had wanted to know whether there had been any progress in adopting the Open Skies Policy for air transportation and if there were any plans to remove Air Botswana’s domestic monopoly. ENDS