Air Zimbabwe - Bad Publicity

Bad Publicity

In June 1999 the Chicago Tribune published a story in which the reporter Gaby Plattner claimed she had flown from Kariba to Hwange on an Air Zimbabwe service, and that the flight departed without a co-pilot, who did not arrive on time for unexplained reasons. It was claimed that during the flight the pilot went to the bathroom, held the cockpit door open with a rubber band, that the aircraft encountered turbulence on its flightpath and the rubber band snapped loose, and that the door eventually got closed and locked the pilot out of the cockpit. The article also claimed that the pilot had to use an axe to chop down the door. The newspaper later stated that this story was untrue.

Some time later the carrier sued CNN after it ran a story claiming it was the most dangerous airline in the world.