22 Mar 2020

 The Civil Aviation Authority of Botswana (CAAB) fears for drastic downfall in revenue collection due to COVID-19.

Head of public affairs at CAAB, Mr Modipe Nkwe, said  in an interview that even though there had not been any flight cancellation into Botswana, the aviation industry might suffer huge financial losses due to international travel bans by many governments.

He said the decision to restrict international travel to and from COVID-19 high risk countries had already brought a precipitous decline in airline service resulting in the grounding of many airlines.

“Global commercial air traffic decreased by 4.3 per cent in February compared to 2019 and is now 10 per cent lower in March 2020 compared to 2019,” he said. 

He stated that the past week saw a sharp decrease in commercial flights since airlines had begun to park their fleets and operating minimum services or none at all.

Mr Nkwe noted that a major decline in commercial traffic began during the third week of January and accelerated in to February before making a modest recovery toward the end of the February into the first week of March.With a number of  commercial passenger and cargo flights dropping significantly since the virus outbreak, Mr Nkwe stated that CAAB was also anticipating a decline in its collection of navigation fees and aeronautical charges.

“Airspace users; commercial airlines and where applicable, general aviation, are required to pay for air navigation charges, whose purpose is to finance the services provided by the country they are flying above,” he said.

He said air navigation fees were almost universally applicable when using another country’s airspace, hence the grounding of airlines impacting on CAAB’s navigation fee revenue flow.

Mr Nkwe cautioned that larger legacy airlines were diminishing above Botswana’s skies but would be bolstered by their financial strength, while the leverage of state-owned flight operators did not look good.

“For low cost airlines most of the tickets are non-refundable, so as long as those airlines do not agree to hand tickets back, actually the revenues for the next two or three months will not be catastrophic,” he said.

Mr Nkwe confirmed that CAAB had closed privately owned aerodromes being Limpopo Valley, Limpopo Lipadi, Sua Pan, Orapa, Karowe, Jwaneng as well as CAAB managed ports of entries in Shakawe, Ghanzi and Selebi Phikwe. ends