Member Info for Rufiji

SAA have announced significant cutbacks in schedules to West Africa, DRC and Uganda amongst other destinations. Doubt if this is an opportunity for FJET , more an illustration that a blanket coverage of Africa makes no economic sense. SAA also revealed that the government of Zimbabwe ( and Nigeria and Angola) owed it substantial sums of money. Hope FJET is not issuing tickets on credit to Zim ministers and civil servants

Shylock, I think all share your point of.view,but the numbers made it very difficult for the no.confidence vote to succeed contrary to what media and financial markets were headlining. As it happened 40 ANC members voted against Zuma ( think of the commotion if 40 Tory members voted May down) and he is badly wounded

Agree Zambia would.be attractive. ProFlight curreny.charge extortionate fares on all domestic routes, but with a new national airline in the offing I am not sure the Zambian Government will be welcoming.

Yes,interesting. My take is that they will focus on where they have existing infrastructure so JNB and HRE to Bulawayo and JNB-DAR. They could possibly do two rotations per day on the latter with the morning flight leaving around 05:00. No problem as the majority of PAX welcome an early start to beat the horrendous DAR traffic.

Plenty of comment in the South African media about a just released audit showing SAA to be effectively bankrupt unless it gets additional significant.goverment financial support, which unfortunately is likely to happen. Over 30% of external contracts categorised as irregular or dubious = accounting speak for looting by insiders and connected businessmen and politicos. Staff demonstrating about lack of pay. Now if only SAA were to be grounded even for a short time think what a boost to FJET. On the other hand if they are still flying their predatory pricing activities, supported by SA government, would give FJET a headache if any of the new routes competed with SAA on high value routes such as LUN-JNB

Fjetcrazy I respect your point of.view and I agree there is no immediate threat to FJET, but I observe a singular change in economic direction in TZ.

More aggressive comments from Magafuli on the mining industry. Not sure if he is threatening to shut down mining companies that alledgedly avoid taxes or to nationalise them. No immediate threat to FJET but if the anti foreigner popularism gathers momentum and moves outside the mining industry then there could be concerns if all this noise leads to more demands for Tanzanian control of core industries.

Essentially they handle.DHL courier business plus Red.Cross and WFO contracts. To my knowledge.they have no passenger flights

Fjetcrazy, yes they do but I am.advised that Ethiopian and KQ also have the rights, so I have.misled you in claiming a sole operator. Nonetheless competition does.not.seem to exist as almost all flights are North of $300. Perhaps FJET do have the opportunity to carve out a profitable niche.

The LUN HRE rights are currently with Emirates who charge, believe it or not, between $300 and $500 return although they are reliable and daily. A positive step if FJET have acquired these rights in addition although it is no longer the high volume route it used to be 15-20 years ago. Political momentum in Zimbabwe seems to be with Mrs Mugabe to succeed Robert. Interesting times indeed if that happens.

PJM unfortunately not in respect only of airlines as the Gupta saga in South Africa illustrates, and many infrastructure projects seem to be just exercises in padding supply and procurement contracts. With your knowledge I am sure you can point to examples. Perhaps there is a silver lining in FJET competing against compromised operations, as they must win in terms of efficiency and competitiveness

Sorry ...... air traffic agreement. Hope you are well

Hello Marksman, see my previous post. We can look back at the hopelessness of Ed and.co, but the Zambian Government never really gave them a chance and always had a phoenix national airline as a priority. I fear FJET will not make much headway with the current government unless tjey can leverage on the SAA Zambia reciprocal airtraffic agreeme

Yes totally agree but I think that the business case is not necessarily the profitability of the airline ,but all the procurement contracts and staff placements to insiders and party members that can be put in place, pace SAA and Air Zim and even KQ before it was sorted out over the past two years.By the bye Mahogany Air is back in the skies supported by Qatari money so gossip in Lusaka would have it

The Times of Zambia is reporting that the government is getting Zambia Airlines back in the air through the purchase of 5 Sukhoi 100 planes for $ 180 million one of which will be a VIP. version for the Head of State. They are targeting regional destinations. Perhaps a reason for, the litany of obstruction shown to FJET.

Tanzania is fast becoming a difficult place to do business. The ACM issue is souring the landscape and the insistence of the government taking 50% of mining and energy projects is off-putting, all the more so as I expect this popularism to extend to other sectors as no doubt will the increasing difficulty in getting work permits. It needs hardly to be stated that ACM explored every angle to reduce taxes but if it exported the amount of ore claimed it would be amongst the biggest gold mining companies in the world and not the comparatively small operation it is. The original tax submission was approved.by PWC and the Tanzania tax authorities. Against this backdrop I expect more pivoting away from TZ towards Southern Africa for FJET.

Good point. The expansion into California will require very heavy marketing spend to raise their profile and establsh the brand. It is not as if they are acquiring an established network. The $50 million they raised in February will not be sufficient and with additional marketing spemd likely both in Australia and UK, I think that the market is beginning to anticipate a considerable fund raising exercise.

I think Solenta will keep this afloat. Unfortunately they are likely to take whatever works in this operation into their balance sheet for crumbs. I do not think us shareholders will see any reasonable pay out, and possibly nothing at alll. They can then develop an African lcc on their own terms using their established presence across the continent and their leasing operation as a further prop. Possibly they will re-float via an IPO a few years down the line. Not that such an action will do us any good.

He would be better off doing this in Southern Africa. Of FJET.s two mainland.destinations Mwansa is a pleasant enough city but not on any main tourist route; Mbeya is a distinctly edgy place on a major smuggling route from Quilemane/ Dar to the Congo with some industry. Most tourists arriving to visit rhe game parks transfer to small airlines such as Zanair and Coastal.

Good luck with EDL. Now that the TZ Government has banned the import of foreign coal, perhaps EDL is a contrarian play against the rising popularism. I have been in and out of Shanta but they seem to promise more than they deliver.