SAA’s Zimbabwe revenue up in the air
As Zimbabwe’s various forms of local payment deviate from their supposed underlying dollar value, SAA is coming up short in a big way …
Anyone in Zimbabwe can nip along to SAA’s lovely offices in Harare to book and pay for a holiday overseas at about a half to a third of the real price. Paying with Zimbabwe’s "funny money" means a trip, beginning in Harare, can be a bonanza for travellers using the airline. And anecdotal evidence suggests anyone seems to be able to do this — Zimbabweans, foreigners, even tourists in Zimbabwe can buy a cheap ticket if they have access to someone local to pay the cost for them, and if the journey begins in Zimbabwe. But the money paid for that ticket, cheap as it may be, has been stuck in Harare, with SAA unable to get its hands on it as a result of the foreign-currency shortage in Zimbabwe. Neither have other airlines in the same position — RwandAir and Fastjet (which operates out of Johannesburg but recently began providing daily domestic flights between Harare, Bulawayo and Victoria Falls). The inability to repatriate funds from ticket sales has prompted a number of airlines to mov...
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