Air Malawi

Air Malawi brands its self as "Africa's friendly airline"!? I live in Kenya and my mother was coming from the UK to Blantyre via Nairobi. She was booked on a Saturday flight to Blantyre via Lilongwe from Nairobi. On the Friday we found that Air Malawi had cancelled the flight (without thinking to tell us). When I contacted them they said there was a flight on the Monday but it was full so they rebooked her for the Wednesday flight. As she was going to Malawi for 2 weeks this would have made her trip very short. Finally I managed to get her on the monday flight. Air Malawi have two scheduled flights a week from Nairobi to Lilongwe. Monday and Friday. But they book people for all seven days of the week. If enough people book they fly if they don't they cancel the flight. The thing that really annoyed me was that I chose to use Air Malawi because they told me they fly every day. If I had known the truth I would have used Kenya Airways who admit they have only two flights a week. The second thing that annoyed me was that there was not even a hint of an apology from them for cancelling the flight. If you are trying to go to Malawi my advice is to use Kenya Airways. They are more expensive - but they will get you there when they say you will and if they can't at least they will say sorry!

A very pleasant airline that tries hard despite being the national carrier of a very poor country with only 3 planes. The service on the 737 is equal to SAA. The domestic flight on a Cessna Caravan between Blantyre and Club Mak was perhaps the most fun flight I have ever undertaken. The pilot flew low so we could look at the scenery and even made several detours to look at herds of elephants and hippos. Service on this flight was understandably limited to a "help yourself" cooler filled with soft drinks but too busy looking out the windows anyway.