Government contemplates airports reopening

The government is contemplating on reopening the country’s airports to facilitate resumption of flights into Malawi.

The government announced closure of the airports in April this year in a bid to contain spread of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Ethiopian Airlines has started advertising for its commercial flights to Malawi indicating that the government has given them a nod to resume.

In a communication to one of their customers based in United States of America, the airline company indicates that they no longer have restrictions to travel to the country from the August 1.

Ministry of Transport has indicated that flights may resume in the next two weeks to bring business to normalcy and to protect jobs among other things.

Ministry of Transport, Sidik Mia, said that he was in talks with the ministries of finance and health.

Apart from the Nairobi to Blantyre route, the airline company has also halt routes from Nairobi to Luanda in Angola, Bamako in Mali, Brazzaville in Republic of Congo, Mogadishu in Somalia, Khartoum in Sudan, Djibouti in Djibouti and Maputo in Mozambique.

The transportation industry is one of the sectors which have been hit hard by the pandemic as different countries have placed travel restrictions to contain the spread of coronavirus.

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) projects that air travel will most likely take two to three years to recover to 2019 levels.