Air Zimbabwe: The Long Road Back

28 September 2026
There was a time when Air Zimbabwe was one of the better-known airlines in southern Africa.
It had a real international network, including flights to London, and it was an important part of Zimbabwe's air transport system.
Then things went badly wrong.
Aircraft disappeared from service, debts accumulated, the network shrank and the airline became a shadow of what it had once been.
Now Air Zimbabwe is flying to London again.
That sounds like a turnaround story.
But I am not sure we should get carried away just yet.
The airline restarted the Harare–London Gatwick service in July, operating three flights a week with an Airbus A330-300 supplied by Plus Ultra under an ACMI arrangement.
The aircraft has 302 seats.
That is a lot of seats for an airline that has been operating on a relatively small scale.
And that immediately raises the question that matters most:
Can Air Zimbabwe make money out of them?
That is rather more important than whether the aircraft is flying.

London makes sense

There is a good reason for Air Zimbabwe to want London back.
There is a large Zimbabwean community in the UK. There is also tourism, business traffic, government travel, students and the usual visiting-friends-and-relatives market that supports many long-haul routes.
A direct flight from Harare to London is also a much better product than asking passengers to connect somewhere else.
Zimbabwe also wants the tourism business that comes with international visitors, and Victoria Falls is a major attraction.
So there is a genuine market.
But having a market and making money from it are two different things.
That distinction is often lost when airlines announce new routes.
The aircraft may be full.
The airport may be happy.
The tourism authorities may be happy.
The politicians may be happy.
And the airline can still lose money.

The A330 is interesting

The choice of an ACMI aircraft is probably one of the more sensible parts of the operation.
Air Zimbabwe does not have to buy an aircraft.
It does not have to finance the aircraft.
It does not have to recruit and train a new long-haul crew establishment.
It does not have to build an entirely new maintenance operation around the aircraft.
Plus Ultra provides the aircraft, crew, maintenance and insurance.
Air Zimbabwe sells the seats.
That gives the airline a way of getting back into the London market without taking on the full cost and risk of owning and operating a widebody aircraft itself.
But ACMI is not cheap.
Air Zimbabwe still has to sell enough seats, at a high enough average fare, to make the numbers work.
And 302 seats three times a week is a substantial amount of capacity.
This is where I would be looking very closely at the numbers.
Not just the load factor.
The yield.

Then there is the rest of the airline

This is where the Air Zimbabwe story gets interesting.
While the London operation was being relaunched, the airline was also dealing with problems elsewhere.
Its Boeing 767 was reportedly impounded at OR Tambo over unpaid airport charges.
Whatever the precise circumstances, it is not a good look for an airline trying to rebuild itself.
This is the problem with airlines.
You cannot really fix one part of the business in isolation.
You can have a very good London route and still have a very weak airline.
The money generated by one route has to support an organisation that has aircraft, engineers, crews, airports, suppliers, offices, systems and a whole range of other costs.
And those bills arrive every month.

Air Zimbabwe's fleet is another problem

The airline has never really escaped its fleet problems.
There have been aircraft sitting idle for long periods, aircraft requiring maintenance and aircraft that have simply become uneconomic to operate.
There have also been questions about the future of the Boeing 777s acquired from Malaysia Airlines.
This raises a point that applies to airlines everywhere.
An aircraft sitting on the ground is not necessarily an asset.

A small fleet that flies regularly and makes money is a much better business than a large fleet sitting around waiting for money to be found to put it back into service.

So what should Air Zimbabwe do?

I would resist the temptation to rebuild the airline simply by adding routes and aircraft.
The first job should be to work out what the airline is actually good at.
London is an obvious candidate.
Victoria Falls is another.
There may be a role for a carefully selected regional network.
There may also be opportunities in cargo.
But every route should be asked the same question:
Does this route make money?

The national airline problem

This is where Air Zimbabwe faces a problem that is not unique to Zimbabwe.
National airlines are rarely judged purely as businesses.
They are expected to provide national connectivity.
They are expected to support tourism.
They are expected to create jobs.
They are expected to fly routes that private airlines might not consider attractive.
And, sometimes, they are expected to be symbols of national pride.
All of those things have value.
But somebody still has to pay for them.
The airline cannot be expected to operate commercially while simultaneously being used as a tool for objectives that have nothing to do with commercial performance.
If the government wants a particular route operated for economic or social reasons, there is an argument for the government to recognise the cost of that decision.
Otherwise the airline ends up being blamed for losses that it was effectively instructed to incur.

Air Zimbabwe has a chance

There is a genuine opportunity here.
Zimbabwe has a tourism industry.
It has a diaspora.
It has a large country with limited surface transport options.
It has Victoria Falls.
It has regional traffic.
And it has a market for an airline that can provide reliable service at a reasonable price.
But the airline does not need to become the Air Zimbabwe of 2005 again.
It does not need a huge fleet.
It does not need to fly everywhere.
It does not need to compete with every airline in the region.
It needs to find the part of the market where it can make money and concentrate on that.
The London flight is a start.
The real test is what happens after the publicity has gone away and the monthly bills start arriving.
That is when we will find out whether Air Zimbabwe is really back.

Contrasting business models

 

Ethiopian Expansion

Does Ethiopian's expansion develop African aviation capacity, or does it simply transfer African markets into an Ethiopian-controlled network?

Ethiopian has demonstrated something that many African Operators have struggled to achieve: scale, connectivity and financial resilience.

Its expansion can bring:

• better international connectivity into smaller African markets;
• access to Ethiopian's fleet, systems and technical expertise;
• training and operational know-how;
• stronger maintenance and engineering capability;
• access to global distribution;
• potentially lower costs through economies of scale;
• an opportunity for smaller national Operators to survive rather than disappear.

For a country with a small aviation market, partnering with a strong African Operator may be considerably better than having no viable international network at all.

But there is a serious downside

There is a point where African aviation integration becomes Ethiopian aviation expansion.

If Ethiopian takes control of an increasing number of African markets, several things can happen:

1. Local capability may weaken.

A national Operator that becomes dependent on Ethiopian management, aircraft, systems and expertise may never develop its own commercial and operational capability.

2. Profits can leave the local market.

The aircraft may be registered locally and the Operator may employ local people, but the strategic and economic value can increasingly accrue to the parent or controlling partner.

3. Competition can disappear.

This is particularly important. African aviation already suffers from thin markets and limited competition. If one highly successful Operator becomes dominant across multiple countries, the continent may move from fragmented national monopolies to one regional dominant Operator.

That isn't necessarily more competitive.

4. Governments can become dependent.

Once a government relies on Ethiopian for international connectivity, replacing that capability becomes difficult. That gives the stronger party considerable negotiating power.

The ideal outcome is for Ethiopian's investment to build African aviation capability, rather than permanently substitute for it.

That means asking:

Who owns it?
Who controls it?
Who operates it?
Who provides the aircraft?
Who develops the people?
Who earns the profit?
And, critically, what capability remains when the partnership ends?

And there is an even bigger issue behind it: African governments may be trading national aviation sovereignty for connectivity because their domestic markets cannot economically support independent national Operators. That is where the economics gets interesting.