Swazi Airlink, the only airline lined up to use the new
King Mswati III Airport in Swaziland, would go out of business if it is forced
to move, an independent study revealed.
Swazi Airlink at present runs a service from Swaziland’s
Matsapha Airport to Johannesburg. But
the airline, which is a joint venture including the Swaziland Government, has
been told it must leave Matsapha and operate out of the new airport, formerly
known as Sikhuphe.
Matsapha is ten minutes’ drive from Swaziland’s
commercial capital, Manzini, but Sikhuphe is about 70 km away in the wilderness
in the east of the kingdom.
A 2009 study commissioned by Airlink found air travellers
would rather drive to Johannesburg than take the trek to fly from Sikhuphe.
Business Report newspaper in South
Africa quoted the study, ‘The road journey takes three hours including a stop
at the border post. Total travel time from Matsapha, including getting to the
airport, waiting, flying, going through customs and retrieving baggage at
Johannesburg and taking ground transport to the destination is on average three
hours 30 minutes.
‘From [King Mswati III airport] the journey in each
direction will take four hours 20 minutes. This will make air travel from a
morning or a day trip unviable as the time taken for travel will amount to
eight hours 40 minutes, whereas road travel will take six hours.
The study added, ‘With 60 percent of passengers on this
route being point-to-point travellers, it is estimated that as much as 40
percent of these passengers and 20 percent of connecting passengers, or 32
percent of current passengers, will opt for road travel.
“The risk of a move to [King Mswati III Airport] is
unpalatable considering that in a realistic scenario the business will run at a
loss… leaving the business unsustainable and an inevitable failure.’
At present Matsapha has about 70,000 passengers a year.
King Mswati III Airport needs 400,000 passengers a year to break even.
In 2013, the Swaziland Prime Minister Barnabas Dlamini,
who was unelected by the people, but personally appointed by King Mswati, told
newspaper editors, ‘Swazi Airlink will have to use Sikhuphe as it will be
our international airport.’
After the official opening of the airport on 7 March 2014,
Solomon Dube, Director of the Swaziland Civil Aviation Authority (SWACAA), told
local media Swazi Airlink had specifically asked
not to operate from the airport for now.
He said Swazi Airlink had to first notify its customers
about the move. He said he was not sure when Airlink would relocate to the new
airport.
Meanwhile, no international airline has expressed
interest in using the airport which has cost an estimated E3 billion (US$300
million) so far to build.
The airport has been dubbed King Mswati’s ‘vanity
project’ by critics. King Mswati rules Swaziland as sub-Saharan Africa’s last
absolute monarch. The King has 13 palaces and a personal fortune once estimated
by Forbes Magazine to be US$200 million. Meanwhile, seven in ten of his
subjects live in abject poverty with an income of less than US$2 a day.
Swaziland has the highest rate of HIV infection in the world.
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