South West African Airways

The South West African Airways ( SWAA ) was the first commercial airline in the then South West Africa - now Namibia - and operation of some 1930 to 1935 passengers and airmail - lines within the country and to South Africa. She graduated in 1932 with Union Airways ( UA) together, but went on operating under its own name until it was taken with that of the South African Airways still exists today (SAA).

History

In 1915, troops occupied the Union of South Africa was founded in 1910 during the First World War under the British flag, the German colony of German South-West Africa. The Union of South Africa (from 1961 Republic of South Africa ) managed the now -West Africa ( Afrikaans: Suidwes Africa / English South West Africa) said territory after the war under the mandate of the League of Nations, based in Geneva, the forerunner of the established in 1945 the United Nations.

In 1930 the mandate administration wrote the establishment of a commercial airline with air mail and passenger service for South West Africa. The tender was awarded to this pretty quickly the Junkers Flugzeugwerke from Dessau in republican that has now become the German Empire, which previously operated airlines already known in various other parts of the world and therefore already had an international reputation. The German plant to take root in Africa thus reinforced.

Junkers then founded the same year the South West African Airways and first opened a weekly air mail line between Windhoek and Kimberley in the Union of South Africa. Naturally, the fleet of SWAA consisted of Junkers aircraft, in this case from eight machines of the type Junkers F 13 with upholstered seats. Only a short time later, the first passengers and light freight were already transported on routes within South Africa as well as South Africa.

The headquarters of the SWAA was in Windhoek, the capital of South West Africa. The company's colors were red and white and the logo was seen from three stylized aircraft within a circle from above. The Junkers aircraft used as already proven elsewhere in the world excellent and none of these machines ever crashed at the SWAA, one reason why appropriate machine and the successor models of South Africa itself were flown later.

The SWAA sold in 1932, a total of four of its Junkers F 13 to the private South African Airways airline Union (UA ), and they replaced the previously passed through crash lost machinery, the manufacturer de Havilland and Fokker. In the same year, UA and SWAA joined together, but continued to operate under their respective names alone until 1935, with the Union Airways was taken over in 1934 by the South African government.

The new still existing South African airline with the name South African Airways (SAA ) operated the Junkers machines for several years, with the SAA in the South African Railways and Harbours ( the then South African Railways - now Transnet Freight Rail ) was incorporated. The first objectives of the new company were again, as in the Union Airways Cape Town, Durban, Johannesburg and a short time later Windhoek and other cities in West Africa.

Fleet

• Eight Junkers F 13 (1930 ) - four of which were sold to the Union Airways in 1932