Two major global airlines, Eurowings Discover and Ethiopian Airlines, are set to introduce additional flights to Windhoek’s Hosea Kutako International Airport (HKIA) as from Sunday, 27 March 2022, The Brief can reveal.
According to the Namibia Airports Company (NAC), the Lufthansa Group will increase its Eurowings Discover service to seven weekly flights between Frankfurt and Windhoek, starting 27 March 2022 as a year-round service, with a further increase to ten weekly flights from July to mid-September 2022.
This will also include the introduction of the Victoria Falls via Windhoek route.
At the same time, Ethiopian Airlines has announced its intention to resume its Sunday flight from HKIA from 27 March 2022, increasing its frequencies from four to five per week.
The regional airline will now fly between Addis Ababa and Windhoek on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.
“The much-needed developments are implemented thanks to the Bilateral Air Service Agreement (BASA) between Namibia and the states of Germany, South Africa, Angola, and Ethiopia,” the airports operator said.
This comes as Fly Namibia increases its Windhoek to Cape Town flights from three to six weekly in March 2022, while TAAG Angola have added Saturday to their Monday and Thursday schedule.
“This is indeed great news for the aviation and tourism industry in Namibia. Again, this is to drive and revive economic development which was impacted by COVID-19. As NAC, we will continue to stimulate air service development and that is why we invest in infrastructure development at our airports,” NAC CEO Bisey /Uirab said.
“We need to aggressively safeguard these routes and no better way to do it than with great customer experience at the airport and through the visitors’ journey in Namibia. Let us be alert and attentive to the needs of the visitors to ensure that their stay with us is indeed memorable.”
The increase in flights to HKIA has translated to a 131.5% increase in passengers’ traffic from 10393 in February 2021 to 24055 in February 2022.
According to the Hospitality Association of Namibia (HAN) latest data, Namibia recorded a national occupancy rate of 22.5% in February 2022, compared to 18.5% in January 2022.
Majority of the foreign tourists who visited local establishments during February 2022 travelled from Germany, Austria and Switzerland combined (24.4%), South Africa (7.4%), France (1.9%), Benelux (1.8%), the UK and Ireland (1.2%), Asia (1.3%), the US and Canada (0.7%), other SADC (0.2%) and Middle East (0.1%).
HAN said 88.4% of the visitors came for leisure, 4.4% for business and 7.3% for conferences.
Simonis Storm forecasts the country’s tourism sector to be one of the key drivers to support its GDP growth forecast of 2.5% in 2022 and expects a rebound in foreign arrivals and national occupancy rates.
