Namibia: AirNam Wraps Up Probe

The Namibian

Chritof Maletsky

AIR Namibia has completed its probe into allegations of extortion against a cabin-crew member on its July 11 flight to Luanda, Angola.

The airline's Manager of Flight Operations, Henda van der Post, confirmed that the investigation into the conduct of crew member Karin Mabuza had been completed and that the next step would be a disciplinary hearing.

"We just need to finalise the date for the hearing but she is still on suspension," Van der Post said.

Mabuza was suspended after a passenger on the flight between Luanda and Windhoek blew the whistle on her.

She allegedly cajoled clients in business class out of US dollars by not giving them change for items bought, or inflating prices so that she could pocket the difference.

The air hostess allegedly also upgraded two clients to business class and asked them to pay her US$50 each.

When she received a payment of US$100 from one, the air hostess kept the US$100 and insisted that the one client had also paid for the other.

After another passenger intervened and set of an exchange of words in Portuguese and English, the air hostess allegedly returned the US$100.

According to the traveller, the steward serving the business-class section never intervened.
He described the episode as "shameless greed" by one individual.

Helois //Hoabeb, Air Namibia's General Manager for Commercial Services, said earlier that they would leave no stone unturned in rooting out corruption.

He said such incidents were not known to the Air Namibia management or were extremely rare and had not reached management's ears before, but they took all allegations of malpractices, corruption, misrepresentation, extortion and theft very seriously.

The Namibian has it on good authority that similar incidents have allegedly happened in the past but were not reported to the management.

Air Namibia recently launched a Fraud Prevention Plan and does not want the incident to mar its drive to become a corruption-free airline.