Air Botswana

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Air Botswana

IATA BP	ICAO BOT	Callsign BOTSWANA
Founded		1972
Hubs		Sir Seretse Khama International Airport
Frequent flyer program		Teemane Club
Fleet size		5
Destinations		9
Headquarters		Gaborone
Key people		Lance Brogden (General Manager)
Website: http://www.airbotswana.co.bw

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.

1 History
2 Incidents and accidents
3 2005 news
4 Services
5 Fleet
6 External links
7 References

[edit] 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.^[1]

An Air Botswana aircraft was featured on the film "The Gods Must Be Crazy."

[edit] Incidents and accidents

On 11 October 1999, an Air Botswana captain, Chris Phatswe, 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.^[2]

[edit] 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. ^[3]

[edit] Services

Air Botswana operates the following services (at February 2007):

Domestic scheduled destinations: Francistown, Gaborone, Kasane and Maun.

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.