Ethiopian Airlines won’t stop robbing Malawians until our government steps up
We are not shocked, as you are, with revelations that Malawi Airlines has posted zero profits in five years but, at the same time, paid over K41 billion for aircraft sub leases, management fees and other payments to its strategic partner, Ethiopian Airlines (ET).
We are not shocked because we know that the liquidation of Air Malawi was all a cover up to mass fraud and corruption that grounded what was once Africa’s friendliest airline.
That liquidation, which saw ET claiming a 49 percent stake in our airline and we retained 51 percent, was all a hoax as it did not address the fundamental reasons why Air Malawi, all over sudden, got grounded.
What we know is that Air Malawi, because of poor leadership, was saddled with mountains of avoidable debts accumulated over years, billions of cash that went into voracious pockets of politicians.
One such country which Malawi government, through Air Malawi, owed so much is Morocco. Your government won’t tell you; but we can reveal to you that, at the point of liquidation, Air Malawi had a functional plane, an airbus, which they will not tell you, its whereabouts.
What they will lie to you is that, at the point of liquidation, Malawi had no plane, as such, it had to get all planes from ET. Foolish lie.
We can reveal to you that Morocco took the functional plane that we had as punishment for Malawi’s failure to pay the debts we owed them. They won’t tell you this because it’s embarrassing for a sovereign country but we will, because you need to know, tell you this.
What you, Malawians, need to know is that, at the point of negotiations and discussions, ET was furnished with all the necessary details of our wretchedness and they acted cleverly but with strategy. Despite having a 49 percent, which we know was all pseudo, ET knew that it has a tacit 100 percent as Malawi was in a desperate state and couldn’t argue its case.
Well here we are: Are you surprised that we have posted zero profits in five years but, at the same time, paid over K41 billion for aircraft sub leases, management fees and other payments to ET?
Well ET knows our weakness and it won’t stop milking us until our government makes tough decisions, serious ones.
There are three things government needs to do, right now. One, tell off ET and say goodbye. Two, engage other countries to have direct daily flights to Malawi. And three, engage rich Malawians and institutions, give them good concessions, to start an airline to serve and profit the nation.
If government doesn’t do that, well, we will remain chattels of ET, a kind of another systematic colonization.
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There is no strategic partner. Ethiopian airlines owns Malawian. Ethiopian airlines runs Malawian. So rest in peace whoever wrote this foolish uninformed article. And for all the dust eaters of Dowa and Mcp mbobo ridders, please stop blaming Dpp and whatever boogie man you have in your visions of jebus. This problem of having poor managed infrastructure started with Kamuzu Hastings Evil Banda, the father of detentions and imprisonment. He ruled for 30 years without improving any of the colonial buildings and used every nepotistic ideology while depressing living conditions for Malawians from other areas. So pitani mukadye fumbi la mu dowa. Mponera and Kia airport. Malawi is a dustball and will never improve. Keep praying to fake Gods with fake greasy leaders like A LAZA . rip nyasaland
Very corrupt airlines. Even the ground staff will issue a confirmed ticket to you and when you arrive at airport you will be told the flight is full and you will go next day. Why because they have given your seat to someone you bribed them. It has happened to me many times.
This why I say, we need more than mindset change! And it have to start with the leadership! Like you can’t run a government with thieves and crooks you can’t run a airline, a parastatal, a company. Look for an example at our strong cash based grocery retail sector: We had our indigenous People’s Supermarkets countrywide. Nowadays, we depend on all kind of foreign managed grocery markets, like Shoprites, Sanaa’s, Chipiku Plus, Game…!
Air Malawi never owned an airbus, at the time it was liquidated the airline had two Boeing 737s, a 300 and 500 sseries. Air Malawi folded because of poor management, which resulted in over employment of the support team on one hand and lack of patriotism from travelling malawians who opted to fly south African airways for pety reasons. The airline had good engineers who despite experience were always underpaid, it only paid better wage to the pilots as a result most left for greener pasture. The end result was the outsourcing of engineering services which was very expensive for the sick company.
Air Malawi is stupidity
Who is the owner of the fleet? How much did they invest in? Who services the planes, who trains the pilots? Who is managing the company? Who pays for all the airport fees? How much investment does Malawi have in this company? It would present a better picture if these facts are presented. Otherwise the story here is incomplete. And I hope one day Malawi will have its own airline then we will understand how much profits we will make. Check in how Kenya Airways and South African Airways are performing and compare that with the Ethiopian Airways business model, otherwise sensational reporting in Malawi has so far not benefited us a single coin, I hope this one will
Kenya and SAA are franchises of Dutch Airlines.
Mumamwa chani Nkulu. You can drink on me… I will take care of your bill.
This story borders on hearsays and speculations
The lease and management bills are okay as per normal business practice because whether you making profit or losses you still have to meet those bills. It should be an issue should the charges be excessive as per industry standards.
Yes Malawians need to know about the Air Craft and airbus positions.
Bakili muluz’s resume was the worst of all. He privatised most of our companies. Air Malawi was one of the best statutory corporations during Kamuzu Banda’s time. Anthu openga mwapanga bwanji.
Lekani katandula was liquidator for air Malawi, why did he let Morocco snatch the airbus? I think as liquidator he failed his country.
When we say DPP GOVERNMENT was governed by Devils, where we are now, so may dirties are unearthed, if we didn’t change the Government,
Sure we could be still is in blindness.
But some people are now busy blaming so that this new government must be busy with that they are talking, and fail to follow what all dirties what DPP were doing. Shame on you DEVILS of BLUE CAMP. People who were not worried about poor Malawians.
What I like here is that someone is telling the background to the mess we are in and is at the same time proposing solutions which our leadership should seriously consider.
It’s a fact that the previous regimes really messed things up in their quest to enrich themselves with no thread of morality. Damage has been done but we have to start picking up the pieces and trust the new leadership to make good progress towards a self reliant Malawi. It will be tough but it must be done for the sake of generations to come.
So you’re saying internal corruption in Malawi meant that other countries tookassets in the place of debts and helped to keep the airline going by buying shares in it. And your solution is to buy these back so Malawians can then indulge in more corruption? Why would anyone invest in thieves?
This article seems like a misplaced nationalistic piece.
Shame
Malawi is a country full of thieves. There are people with education attained from world class universities but there’s nothing they do to uplift their country. People want quick money, no morals and no respect of anything. The problem is: it is the “educated” who are ruining the country by tricking everyone.
That airline made money and the accounting books were cooked to defraud the tax man. Dziko longokhalila kubelana basi. Everyone wants money to the extent of even robbing your own kind. There’s no standard in anything. A proper shit hole.
A proper and bonafide shit hole. A death trap and cursed land. Thanks for the truth
Amene anatitemberera a malawi anatilakwila
In Malawi it is like we do not know what we really want. Politics is about power, yes we all agree, but our politicians use the power wrongly to satisfy their insatiable appetite for money at the expense of developing this nation. They make wrong decisions deliberately so that they can fool us to believe they are serving our interests when in reality they are not. They think that holding political power is about developing themselves. Liquidation of Air Malawi and partnership with Ethiopian Airlines was a strategy used by the then politicians to blindfold us, they new exactly what they were doing and that was not in the interest of the poor Malawians. Malawi will never develop through the context of politics if there is no mindset change in our politicians. It is only in Africa particularly in Malawi where the principal agency theory is misunderstood completely. Politicians think they are the principals and the citizens are the agents when in actual sense the politicians are supposed to serve the interests of the people not theirs. If the tonse alliance government is to be successful, cabinet ministers, members of the legislature, ward counselors and government officials must have a mindset change. These people need to fully understand the meaning of the principal agency theory. I totally disagree with politicians when they say that it is the people of Malawi who need to have a mindset change for this country to develop.
We are able to pay lawyers K 7 billion kwacha for 2 months work.Why should we fail to pay k41 billion in 5 years?
The problems are not the politicians, it is us Malawians who have such information and yet we keep mum instead of confronting such issues head-on. This is one of the reasons making our country the poorest of the in the world.We have allowed the monsters(politicians) to make poor decisions which they still continue to make for Malawi to be in the dire state she has found herself to be in.
If this article is true then it’s so sad. Why can’t the current regime move and restart Air Malawi – Africa’s friendly Airline?
Tanzania, Moza, Zim & SA still run their flag carriers why not Malawi
41 billion MK has been paid to ET- money that could have been used to directly develop our flag carrier
💪💪DZUKA MALAWI DZUKA 💪💪
1994 Air Malawi was Africas friendly airline. 1994 Muluzi took over govt of Malawi with his UDF. 2020 and Air Malawi is gone and burried. today we hear K41 billion has gone to Ethiopia. Those five years, Peter Muthalika was in charge of Malawi with his DPP. Both, Muluzi and Muthalika are still alive and available in Malawi. Are you thinking what I am thinking?
As Malawi Airlines is Sold to ET and Malawi Government is also sold to China and EU and USA and Heavily indebted with External Funding and Loans from International Financial institutions MCP and UTM will SALE malawi Foreign Countries as has been with Air Malawi
In his State of the Nation Address on September 4th, President Lazarus Chakwera promised that his government would secure agreements with commercial airlines so as to include Lilongwe in their global networks.
Nothing has happened so far even though a few airlines are looking to establish hubs in Africa. Look at Rwanda who partnered with Qatar Airways. Come on guys we need a similar deal.
Emirates, the fourth largest airline in the world, just signed an interline agreement with Airline to extend its reach across Southern Africa. Guess who missed out in this great deal … Malawi!
So who is left as a potential candidate? Four American airlines and three Chinese, plus a number of smaller players. Highly unlikely, but still worth knocking on their doors.
Or else negotiate a deal with Israel to have El Al establish a hub in Lilongwe in return to Malawi opening an embassy in Jerusalem. Dirty politics, but still better than the current over-dependence on ET.
Wow
Incredible.
Our problem is we leave our organisations to be run by people who have no interest in the welfare of the organizations themselves. Go to Malawi Consulate in Johannesburg and see the state of the public toilet, you will wonder if the place has a leader. It is disgusting to say the least and yet we continue to put our trust in people like these. Malawi always has a sad hidden story. I hope the new guys will sort out these anomalies.
New guys only thinking how much money they can plunder in the next five years,the party I voted out and one I voted in,difference only the regalia.
The officials at Johannesburg Malawi consulate are busy running private businesses instead of working. They are busy buying commodities and selling to Malawi they have no time for consular activities. The weakest link is the dept of foreign affairs at capital hill. No leadership
So disgusting…
I hope the new government will follow up and tougher agreements which will help both sides.
Agreed!!
And for your information we do have seriously rich Malawians both within and outside the country who are prepared to put their money together and run a successful Malawian wholly owned airline company.
The problem we have in Malawi is jealousy, they would rather sell our public companies to foreigners for a tick than to fellow Malawians ever for ten times the same price.
This is why it has taken over 50 years after independence for our parliament to approve dual citizenship to allow Malawians settled in diaspora to invest back home…. and even though the dual citizenship law was approved almost a year ago, it has not been operationalised up to now.
Muona ngati ma comments atadutse 4 apa
SAD!!!
Mungotaya nthawi ndi nkhani imeneyi, ife timakwera bus
The main point of your article is about how Malawi Airlines is struggling and not making a profit. Well, that is how it is with small airlines. The air transportation sector is very competitive, and profits are attainable only when there is lots of business, such that revenue > expenses. In the case of airlines, this translates to many routes and flights per day, along with the maximum utilization of seating capacity of the aircraft (80% or more seats booked) on each flight. Other notable factors that determine profitability in the commercial aviation industry are taxes and fees (paid to the government), costs of servicing loans, the cost of aviation fuel and insurance fees.
As discussed above, Malawi Airlines is struggling because it does not have enough business.
The solution that you suggest in your article is not so simple. It would indeed be better to maintain the existing partnership with ET or Kenyan Airways because these are established players in the industry, with the skills, professionalism and experience in this sector.
I would suggest – Malawi Airlines should seek to expand the number of routes (new destinations), streamline and reduce expenses without compromising on quality, and innovate through new products and services. Also, lobby the government for a favorable tax structure.
For starters Air Malawi didn’t have an Airbus as you have said, they had a Boeing 737-300, relatively old and that’s when they became expensive to run due to requiring a lot of maintenance.
ET came to Malawi for the routes. They did not come in to invest in the company. This is the reasons, they have never increased the fleet size or expanded their operation. This is simply Ethiopian using Malawi Airlines name just to avoid rates and everything.
This calls for a review of this contract ASAP. It doesn’t make sense to spend billions in fees when we can use the same money to buy our own planes and manage ourselves or simply invest in other things more profitable. Is there a way to pull out? Check the fine prints of the contract.
I don’t see any problem here ET is here to make profits thru the deal, The problem is with us Malawian we are not aggressive we are good at talking popanda chochitika
The title of the story is wrong. It should “Unless Malawi wakes up, it will continue to pay Ethiopia Airlines for nothing.”
The title must honestly and clearly put the blame where it it is:
Look, the problem is not with Ethiopian Airlines collecting their fees in admin and lease agreements. The problem is with Malawi not knowing how to run this business and maximise profits.
When one rents a shop, they are expected by contractual agreement, to pay rent to the landlord. The landlord is not responsible for managing the shop and ensuring it’s turning a profit, no! The responsibility of the landlord is turn up and knock on the door for his money at the end of each month. That’s the exact position of Ethiopians Airlines. The title of this story is misleading.
#Organisational Construction of Reality
Solution is simple. Let the govt through Privatisation Commission re-negotiate the deal full stop.
Ndiye anapinyolets ndege yathu ndi Muluzi chifukwa mavuto a kampani ya ndegeyi anyamba nthawi ya Muluzi. Nduna zimakwera ndege pa ngongole kuphatikiza ana ao kupita ku South Africa, Kenya, Dubai nd maiko wena pa ngongole zomwe palibe ndi m’modzi yemwe anabweza. Muluzi ndi nduna zake kuphatikiza Brown Mpinganjira akudziwa m’mene anagwetsera Air Malawi.Bingu nkhaniyi anayimbapo kuti anthu onse anli ndi ngongole za matikiti ku Air Malawi abweze, koma UDF iri kumabli yotsuta anafotsera nkhaniyi.