Air Namibia faces $1m lawsuit

A Zimbabwean national is trying to sue Air Namibia for $1m after airline officials allegedly barred him and his family from travelling to Turkey. The pending court action saw an Air Namibia plane impounded in Harare on Friday, disrupting travel plans for dozens of Windhoek-bound passengers. New Zimbabwe reports that Harare High Court Judge Tawanda Chitapi authorised the sheriff of the court to attach the airline’s property, including aircraft, pending the finalisation of the case in which Chenjerai Mawumba is suing for ‘pain, suffering and trauma’. According to court papers, Mawumba, his wife and three children were barred from travelling to Turkey via Windhoek and Frankfurt in February 2017. He says he and his family were detained at Windhoek’s Hosea Kutako International Airport for two days, then deported back to Zimbabwe. The Daily News reports that Mawumba later learned that Air Namibia had ‘a policy of barring Zimbabweans and other nationalities access to Europe in a bid to save itself from paying fines imposed by Germany authorities for the conveyance of illegal passengers’. Despite this, ‘it still accepted his flight payment’.