BY SHAME MAKOSHORI
ALEX Makanda , one of AirZim’s first black airmen has seen it all. In 1980 he arrived at a strong airline to his shock — he and his two compatriots were the first to fly the former Air Rhodesia jets. On touch down at the Robert Mugabe International Airport from Ethiopia, Tommy Sithole, then editor of The Herald ran exciting headlines about the airmen’s arrival to transform AirZim. And they did. Soon, he found himself favoured by the President’s Office to fly the late former President Robert Mugabe on his endless international trips. This week Makanda told our Business Editor Shame Makoshori (SM) that his most memorable experience was being assigned to bring home brand new giant Boeing 767 (B767) aircraft straight from the assembly line from the United States of America in November 1989. But this doesn’t excite him anymore. Following his colourful career, Makanda is among hundreds of the airline’s staff who are being forced to accept Zimbabwe dollar payouts for US dollar terminal benefits. The government is using a draconian Statutory Instrument to do this. But Makanda says he is not surprised at all. It has been a decades old culture of force and manipulation. Everything has gone wrong, he says, noting that it is the government that has destroyed a once promising airline. Here is how their discussion turned up…
SM: In 2009 I interviewed former CEO, Peter Chikumba. He said in 1996 AirZim carried one million passengers. What has gone wrong?
AM: It is the airline that has changed. The 767 (Boeing 767 aircraft) put the airline on a worldwide standard when it arrived in 1989. We used to fly to London, Beijing and all these destinations. So it really changed the game for AirZim. Unfortunately we didn’t keep up with the world standards. We didn’t keep the service exactly the same as we started. For example the inside entertainment on the B767s was very poor. Other airlines were showing movies, we just had basic radio….