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By Staff Reporter

AIR ZIMBABWE passengers in London and Harare were stranded on Tuesday and Wednesday after the national airliner cancelled flights due to a critical aviation fuel shortage, New Zimbabwe.com has learnt.

An evening flight from the Harare International Airport to Gatwick Airport on Tuesday was moved to Wednesday morning, but the fuel situation had still not improved on Wednesday prompting Air Zimbabwe officials to move the flight to the evening of the same day.

Meanwhile, passengers in London who were expecting to catch the return flight were also left stranded. The cancellations could prove costly for Air Zimbabwe which has an international obligation to house and feed passengers, or compensate them, for cancelled flights.

A New Zimbabwe.com reader who was at the Harare International Airport on Wednesday morning wrote: "The flight failed to board at 0700 hrs. We were told that there would be a three hour delay. We waited the three hours, only to be told that the flight would leave at 1200 hrs. As I write, there has been no official communication from Air Zimbabwe but I understand from my sources that the plane is waiting for fuel which is still in the Feruka pipeline!!

"Yesterday (Tuesday), British Airways had to come to the rescue of some flight! We are hungry and soon Air Zimbabwe will have to feed all the ticketed passengers!! Tonight's flight had been cancelled and this abortive flight is overbooked by three hundred! It pours for Air Zimbabwe."

Later on Wednesday, he wrote: "The plane is still on the tarmac! A tanker has been dispatched to Feruka to collect the Jet-A1 fuel. (Why didn't the tanker go to Feruka yesterday?) The hope is for the tanker to arrive back before nightfall. The flight will leave immediately after.

"Point of correction: This was supposed to be the evening flight for Tuesday brought forward to the morning in order to pick up some stranded travellers in London. It is going to be an evening flight after all. AirZim hopes that the return flight will leave London in the early hours of the morning, like 4.00am or so."

On Thursday, Air Zimbabwe spokesman David Mwenga confirmed Air Zimbabwe had suspended some of its flights due to a shortage of jet aviation fuel, but did not specify the routes.

An unnamed airline official, however, told the paper that flights to South Africa, Britain as well as to Zimbabwe's premier tourist destination, the Victoria Falls, "were suspended due to the shortages of fuel".

The official also told the paper that two aircraft, including a Boeing 737, had been grounded due to a lack of spares. Zimbabwe has only a tiny fleet of planes. The London route is serviced by two Boeing 767-200ER.

Amid the fuel crisis, long winding queues of motorists are the order of the day at the few service stations that do receive fuel, while queues of empty cars parked outside dry service stations are also becoming a common sight in the capital.

Zimbabwe has been critically short of foreign currency in recent years needed to import fuel and spares, a situation critics blame on President Robert Mugabe's controversial five-year old land reform programme which they say has hurt farming output, the country's economic backbone.

Mugabe's government blames the foreign currency crunch on the country's drought and also cites the sanctions slapped on Harare by Western countries.
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