TAAG Angola Airlines has become the first major regional airline, which flies directly to Namibia, to cancel flights following the discovery of a new COVID-19 variant, Omicron.
Since last week, several countries including the United Kingdom and the United States have banned visitors and planes from five southern African countries – Namibia, South Africa, Malawi, Botswana and Zimbabwe after South African scientists discovered a new variant of the deadly coronavirus pandemic. President Cyril Ramaphosa has labelled the global travel restrictions on South Africa and other SADC nations as discriminatory. “There is no scientific justification whatsoever for keeping these restrictions in place,” he said.
However, the surprise decision by Angola’s national carrier coming just a few weeks after it had resumed flying to Namibia, when flights between the two countries were suspended on the 19th of March 2020, at a time the most nations effected lockdowns to curb the spread of the deadly coronavirus pandemic.
Angola has shut its borders with South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Eswatini, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe as a precautionary measure effective midnight on Sunday and will remain shut until January 5, 2022.
TAAG, which had resumed the route on the 21st of October 2021, with two flights per week – on Mondays and Thursdays, is expected to operate its last flight to Windhoek, a repatriation flight, on the 30th of November.
“So far we can confirm that only TAAG Angola has cancelled their flights between Windhoek and Luanda due to the new COVID-19 variant. TAAG Angola has indicated that they will be operating an evacuation flight on 30 November 2021 from HKIA. The situation is fluid as some airlines such as British Airways are already reinstating their flights to South Africa, which in turn has an influence on our activity,” Namibia Airports Company Spokesperson Dan Kamati said in response to an inquiry from The Brief.
Kamati maintained that, “for the rest of the airlines it is business as usual until such time that they communicate to us otherwise.”
He, however, admitted that the airports operator will be hard hit by the effect the on-going travel bans and flight cancellations.
“NAC is the in the business of airport development and operations and surely, these travel bans and flight cancelations may significantly affect our revenue and sustainability. We remain vigilant to the ever-changing dynamics of the COVID-19 Pandemic and we will continue to monitor and adjust accordingly,” Kamati said.
Since the removal of lock down regulations in Namibia and globally, the NAC had recorded an encouraging growth and witnessed the resumption of direct flight to Windhoek, a position which is now under threat.
“The removal of the lock down restrictions improved passenger numbers from less than 15% to about 40% of the pre-Covid passenger traffic. We are very encouraged by this. We gladly welcomed back Ethiopian Airways, Airlink, Eurowings Discover, FlyNamibia, and recently TAAG Angola,” Kamati said.
