Delays at Kasane (Botswana), Livingstone (Zambia) and Victoria Falls (Zimbabwe) airports & useful information

Kasane

Airport Building works on the new terminal at Kasane airport continue. The old parking lot has been moved and it’s is quite a distance to walk to where vehicles are now parked. The immigration officers are doing both arrivals and departures which is resulting in guests have to queue for some time. The system is very slow but we are confident that these will be a thing of the past when the new terminal opens. The estimated completion date for the terminal and parking lot is January 2014. Work will also commence on their office buildings which estimated completion date is April 2014. Work will also be carried out on the apron area so some taxiways have been closed off to aircraft and the size of the apron is halved. This means that landing aircraft have priority. Aircraft wanting to depart have to wait until the landing aircraft has landed and is safely on the apron before being allowed to taxi on the one remaining taxi way to the main runway. If there are 5 to 6 aircraft landing at one time the delay can be up to 20 minutes with passengers sitting on board the aircraft and engines running. Livingstone Airport With the terminal now three weeks into their operation, we are starting to see the clearing of immigration going a lot smoother and faster as the staff get to grips with the systems and construction of unfinished areas being completed. However, they are still faced with the challenge of 3 aircraft landing quite close to each other. The reasons for this is that these aircraft (SAA, BA and Airlink) all need to be in line with linking off international flights and tourist schedules. If any clients are chartering, please can you try and land/depart outside of the schedule aircraft times in order to make way for a quicker and smoother check-in. The old terminal has now been made the domestic terminal while the new one services international flights. Victoria Falls Airport This airport continues to be a challenge for both us and passengers. Clients are in some cases having to queue for up to 2 hours to clear immigration. As you can imagine, this is playing havoc with our transport and transfer schedules. Please can you caution your clients that in some instances it will require passengers having to wait for some time for other clients to also clear. The only way this can be avoided is to book private transfers. The new terminal is still under construction with no clear idea of when the completion date will be. As it has been unseasonably hot and discomfort levels are high, we have, for the past two weeks, been providing complimentary chilled water and chilled scented hand towels to everyone who we collect from any pickup point except for short town transfers. The procedure for a traveler is: 1. Complete an Arrival Form 2. Hand the Passport plus appropriate Visa Fee to the Immigration Officer 3. The first Officer writes out a receipt that includes details of the passport - Name, Passport Nº, Date if Issue, Expiry Date, Country of Origin, etc 4. This is handed to a second Officer who now issues the Visa duplicating the detail written out by the first Officer and issues an entry stamp 5. The traveler is then handed back their passport.