Air Namibia to Resume International Flights

MIAMI – Air Namibia (SW) has announced that it will resume international flights to South Africa in the winter season. Starting from October 28, the airline will resume flights to Johannesburg (JNB) and Capetown (CPT).

The airline will link Windhoek (WDH) with JNB three times weekly, on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays. The flight departs from the Namibian capital at 09:30 and will arrive at 11:15. The flight back takes off at 11:55 and lands at 14:00.

There are two diffrenet flights to CPT. One flies direct and the other goes through Walvis Bay (WVB). Both flights run on both Fridays and Sundays. The direct flies to CPT in the morning and arrives back in the evening, following the stopover flights.
Air Namibia will assign an Embraer 135 to all flights. Previously they used A319s for South African flights. Before COVID, SW flew to CPT daily and to JNB three times daily. Comair (BA), South African Airways (SA) and Airlink (4Z) also operated flights on these routes. The latter will also resume flights on the WDH-JNB route.

The airline requires passengers to have a negative COVID-19 PCR test taken no longer than 72 hours before departure.

Air Namibia

Air Namibia has 10 aircraft in tis fleet. Four A319, four E135s and two Airbus A330s. The airline serves a handful of destinations in Southern Africa, including Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana. Its only long-haul destination is Frankfurt (FRA).

Founded in 1946, SW is fully owned by the government of Namibia. It uses WDH for international and Windhoek Eros Airport (ERS) for domestic services. The Transportation Committee of Namibia suspended the airline’s Scheduled Air Services Licence in July. However, they reinstated it after 11 hours.

The airline has suspended all international flights due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The airline is also doing poorly financially: it needs N$7 billion to survive this year. According to Namibian, a Belgian lawyer sued SW because it is insolvent. He is the liquidator of the Belgian airline Challengair, which SW owes debts to.

Considering how broke AirNam is and their history of "deferring" maintenance, not sure I would be lining up to fly with them for awhile.

I wouldn’t fly them if they paid me.....

The pilots aren't the problem, it's the equipment and the ground savages. Every time I take off on Air Nam I expect something important to fall off. It's a marvel something hasn't... so far.

My main beef with them is they only fly when they have enough money to pay for fuel and that isn't exactly consistent or reflective of my schedule.

I don't like Air Namibia at all. They screwed me over twice, not with delayed or cancelled flights, but with moving flights up.


Once in the Caprivi, I had a 3:30PM flight from Katima Mulilo down to Windhoek. At noon, We called the local Air Namibia office to see if flight was delayed. They told us the flight was actually early. In fact the flight would be departing at 12:15 because all the passengers were already in the terminal. This was complete bullshit. I was one of the passengers and I was still in camp!!! Two other American hunters in a nearby concession was also on the flight but missed it, as I did. There was not a flight the following day. So I had 2 extra nights in camp.

A couple years later, I took my son, father and a nephew on plainsgame hunt. Our flight was scheduled to depart Windhoek around 9PM. The day before the flight our travel agent called to check the status of the flight. Air Namibia moved the flight up to 6AM, same day, just 15 earlier than scheduled. We were planning to hunt birds on the last day, but we had to book a hotel in Windhoek the night before the flight. So we lost our half day of bird hunting.

I'll never fly them again.