RWANDA says its decision to suspend flights to Southern Africa was necessitated by the decreasing number of passengers on its national carrier RwandAir due to travel bans imposed by some western countries in the wake of the Covid-19 new variant, Omicron.
Officiating at the opening of the 33rd plenary session of the African Civil Aviation Commission held at the Kigali Convention Centre recently, President Paul Kagame explained RwandAir decision to suspend flights to Southern Africa.
“The Simple reason was just for example the flights that come from southern African most of the passengers who come to Kigali don’t terminate their journey in Kigali in Rwanda. The majority are going through to other destinations,” said President Kagame.
President Kagame also revealed the effects of financial losses arising from the dwindling number of passengers.
“So one of the measures we took was to say lets wait and see what happens across the world, lets stop flying to Southern Africa,” he explained.
He added that he agrees that South Africa is being punished transparency when other countries kept the information under wraps.
Rwanda last month temporarily banned direct flights between Kigali and the southern African region as part of new measures to control the Omicron variant of Covid-19 from spreading into the country.
