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Firstly I must remove some misapprehensions, and provide some definitions. Anywhere that provides rooms for overnight stays along with a food and beverage operation is, to my mind, an hotel. You can call it a lodge, or a B&B, or a Safari camp but it is still an hotel operation. Secondly the pilots at Sefofane might quibble that they are not an airline. Operating scheduled services and carrying over 21,000 passengers a year pretty well makes them a mini-airline. This airline is an essential part of the African hotel operation that is run by the Wilderness Trust.
Typical of some of the landscape the airline flies over in Namibia. Pilot awareness of alternate emergency landing areas is constant and high
I was in Namibia to look at the Wilderness Safari hotel operation. Graded at three, four and five star levels their lodges provide an experience typical of the safari operations springing up all over Africa. Hotels range from self catering operations in the Kalahari through to the luxury lodges such as Kempinski's luxury Bilila Lodge in the Serengeti. With around 50 lodges in its portfolio in an arc across the continent, Wilderness operate on a different financial basis from most other operations and work with local communities on a shared equity basis. With some 50 lodges the use of an airline is important to move guests around - I flew between two lodges a six minute flight apart that would have taken an hour and a half by LandRover. Sefofane is Setswana for 'aeroplane'.
Cessna 210N is about to be pushed by its pilot onto the concrete stand in the foreground for the passengers to get on board and luggage to be loaded
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Sefofane route map for Namibia. The airline also covers Botswana, Zambia, South Africa, Tanzania and Zimbabwe
Terminal building at a bush strip - this one has a washroom as the tank on the roof indicates.Note external terrace waiting area
Flying over the Sossusvlei one listens carefully for the engine to miss a beat
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