Air Botswana
Encyclopedia : A : AI : AIR : Air Botswana
Air Botswana is the national airline of Botswana. It operates scheduled, charter, domestic and regional services. Its main base is Sir Seretse Khama International Airport (GBE), Gaborone.
History
The airline was established and started operations in April 1972. It was formed to succeed Botswana Airways, which had replaced Botswana National Airways in 1969. It was taken over by the government in April 1988. Its planned privatisation was stalled by the world downturn in commercial aviation in 2001, but is still planned.[link]Fatal crash
On the 11th of October 1999, an Air Botswana captain boarded a parked ATR-42 aircraft A2-ABB in the early morning and took off. Once in the air, he asked by radio to speak to the president, Air Botswana's general manager, the station commander, central police station and his girlfriend, among others. Because the president was out of the country, he was allowed to speak to the vice president. In spite of all attempts to persuade him to land and discuss his grievances, he stated he was going to crash into some planes on the apron. After a total flying time of about 2 hours, he did two loops and then crashed at 200 knots (230 mph) into Air Botswana's two other ATR-42s parked on the apron. The captain was killed but there were no other casualties.Airline sources say the pilot had been grounded on medical reasons, refused reinstatement and regrounded until February 2000. Air Botswana operations were crippled, as the airline temporarily only had one plane left - a BAe-146 which was grounded with technical problems.[link]
2005 News
Air Botswana is to refurbish its fleet of ATR 42 aircraft. It had increased utilisation of its BAe 146 and wants to lease another aircraft to expand its route network and capacity on key routes. Towards the end of 2005 a frequent flyer programme will be introduced and online booking an e-ticketing by the end of 2006 (ref: Airliner World, September 2005).Services
Air Botswana operates the following services (at December 2005):
- Domestic scheduled destinations: Francistown, Gaborone, Kasane, Maun and Tuli Block.
- International scheduled destinations: Cape Town, Windhoek, Harare and Johannesburg.
- In May 2006 it has introduced a new timetable due to 2 aircraft currently undergoing repairs and a third undergoing scheduled maintenance. The Maun-Cape Town service is being reduced from 3 to 2 flights a week, on Friday/Sunday and the Kasane-Johannesburg service has been suspended.
Fleet
The Air Botswana fleet consists of the following aircraft (at January 2005):
External links
|
Lists of Aircraft | Aircraft manufacturers | Aircraft engines | Aircraft engine manufacturers
| Airlines | Air forces | Aircraft weapons | Missiles | Timeline of aviation |
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.