Air Zimbabwe logged almost 1,500 confirmed passenger bookings and more than 30 metric tons of cargo within days of restarting direct flights to London, as the carrier’s return to Europe’s busiest travel market gives exporters a faster route for perishable goods facing rising freight costs.
The flag carrier resumed service between Harare and London Gatwick on July 22, ending a 14-year suspension caused by financial strain and European regulatory restrictions that still bar Air Zimbabwe’s own aircraft from the bloc’s airspace. The airline is instead operating the route under a 13-month wet-lease deal with Spanish carrier Plus Ultra Líneas Aéreas, which supplies the Airbus A330 aircraft, crew, maintenance and insurance. Chapman Freeborn Airchartering, a unit of Lithuania-listed Avia Solutions Group, brokered the arrangement.
The route runs three times weekly and gives Zimbabwean exporters new belly-hold capacity for horticultural and pharmaceutical shipments to the UK. That capacity arrives as fuel-cost increases tied to conflict in the Middle East have pushed air-freight rates for Zimbabwean growers to as much as $3.80 a kilogram this year, up from about $2 to $2.20 in 2025, according to Kuminda, an aggregator that ships produce from roughly 5,000 smallholder farmers.
Zimbabwe’s horticulture sector posted record exports of $181.7 million in 2025, driven largely by blueberries, and the country supplies about 60% of UK sugar snap pea imports, according to trade promotion body ZimTrade. Some exporters have shifted volume to sea freight, which takes about 30 days and is poorly suited to perishable cargo, to manage costs.
“It connects our region to the world; it facilitates the movement of high-value cargo; it attracts international business and investment,” Transport Minister Felix Mhona said at the route’s launch.
The route forms part of a broader push by the Mutapa Investment Fund, Zimbabwe’s sovereign wealth fund, to rehabilitate Air Zimbabwe commercially. Fund chief executive John Mangudya had signaled the route’s return for the first half of 2026 as part of a wider restructuring that includes asset sales to streamline the airline’s fleet.
Roughly 190,000 passengers traveled between the UK and Zimbabwe in 2025 without a direct flight, according to industry data cited by aviation outlets, routing instead through Dubai, Doha, Addis Ababa, Nairobi, Johannesburg and Lusaka on journeys that added six to 14 hours versus the roughly 10-hour direct flight. An estimated 130,000 to 190,000 Zimbabwe-born residents live in the UK.
Zimbabwe-UK trade reached about $800 million in the 2022-2023 period, up 67% from the prior year, British Embassy officials in Harare have said, part of a wider re-engagement between the two countries following years of diplomatic distance.
Chapman Freeborn said demand for flexible wet-lease capacity is rising across Africa as carriers rebuild long-haul networks. “ACMI can play an important role in supporting that growth, particularly on strategic routes,” said Linas Dovydenas, the company’s president for the Middle East, Africa and India region.
Air Zimbabwe’s own aircraft remain barred from UK and European airspace under safety oversight rules dating to 2017, meaning the carrier’s long-term ability to operate the route without a foreign wet-lease partner is still unresolved. The current Plus Ultra agreement runs 13 months.
