Rumours surrounding the rebranding of Air Zimbabwe have been awry as a video of a plane branded ‘Zimbabwe Airways’ went viral on social media during the weekend. Air Zimbabwe, which has been banned from flying into the European Union skies due to safety reasons is thought to have been re-branded to Zimbabwe Airways.
#AirZimbabwe rebrands to #ZimbabweAirways, thoughts? #Zimbabwe pic.twitter.com/Gko4enea86
— Bhizimusi Weekly (@bhizimusi) June 25, 2017
According to the local paper, Newsday a lease deal for four modern Boeing 777-200 planes was signed with Malaysian Airways by the Zimbabwean flag carrier.
“The project is being spearheaded by Chief Operating Officer Chikore as the company forges ahead with restructuring. The planes, Boeing 777-200ER, are 12 years old Malaysian Airlines ex-fleet and four of them are expected soon,” the insider said to the Newsday.
Air Zimbabwe had not yet given an official statement on the re-branding to Zimbabwe Airways before the publication of this article. While the national carrier has been having a lot of problems recently due to financial reasons.
During the beginning of this month the same paper reported that United States Embassy barred its citizens from using the Air Zimbabwe citing safety concerns after the the national carrier recently failed to meet certain international safety standards and this would result into losing customers from the United States.
The flag carrier was also banned from flying into the European air zone due to the same reason of safety concerns also a loss of both routes and customers from Europe according to another local paper. It is these problems that could have forced Air Zimbabwe into branding using planes leased from Malaysia Airlines. On the other hand the re-branding of Air Zimbabwe stands nothing if its services and reliability issues are not improved.
Customers have openly complained and attested to such. Issues such as flight delays have been cited while at some point trips have had to be cancelled as the plane could not take off. This has caused a lot of inconvenience and brand damage. One could understand the need for a rebranding, but we cannot help but hope that this will be a holistic change for the sake of the airliner and it’s client base. Here’s hoping that this said “restructuring” will see the airliner back on it’s feet. Meanwhile here are some of the mixed feelings some of our followers had on Twitter.
What do you think of the rebranding?
A rose by any other name is still a rose… https://t.co/fGI247cvgU
— Ngizwakele! (@ngizwakele) June 25, 2017
about freaking time. We need direct flights between Hre & London. Sick of spending hours in airports connecting flights 2 gt home
— Lovemore Jiri (@jirildo) June 25, 2017
