The airport services company Menzies Aviation (Namibia) has staved off the threat of being evicted from Hosea Kutako International Airport, where it is responsible for ground handling operations, for nearly three more weeks.
This is after High Court judge Shafimana Ueitele yesterday dismissed all the legal points a competitor of Menzies Aviation, Paragon Investment Holdings, raised in an urgent application in which Menzies is trying to have a court order for its eviction from Namibia’s largest airport suspended.
Menzies Aviation’s urgent application, which was filed at the Windhoek High Court on Monday and on which Ueitele heard a first round of arguments on Monday evening, is now scheduled to be heard in full on 4 July.
Before postponing the matter yesterday, Ueitele said he is delaying the execution of the order for Menzies Aviation’s eviction from the airport until the urgent application has been decided.
Menzies Aviation has continued to carry out ground handling operations at the airport after it lodged an appeal to the Supreme Court against a High Court judgement in which it was declared on 29 June last year that its ground handling services contract with the Namibia Airports Company (NAC) would end at the close of June last year.
The company lost its appeal against that judgement in the Supreme Court on Friday last week.
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s judgement, the NAC stated that Paragon Investment Holdings, which was awarded the ground handling services contract in a joint venture with Ethiopian Airlines in December 2021, would take over ground handling services at Hosea Kutako International Airport with effect from Tuesday this week.
Menzies Aviation responded to the NAC’s notice by filing an urgent court application in which it is alleging that the airports company gave it an unreasonably short period of four days to comply with a notice that Paragon would take over ground handling services at Hosea Kutako International Airport.
In the application due to be argued before Ueitele on 4 July, Menzies Aviation is asking the court to suspend the execution of an order granted by judge Orben Sibeya on 29 June last year, when Sibeya directed that Menzies Aviation should at the end of 30 June last year cease to provide ground handling services at the airport and vacate premises at the airport it has been using to provide the services.
Menzies Aviation is still challenging the NAC’s decision in December 2021 to award the ground handling services contract at the airport to Paragon in a joint venture with Ethiopian Airlines in a separate case pending in the Windhoek High Court.
Financial figures Menzies Aviation has provided to the court indicate the company projected the NAC would receive N$74,5 million in revenue from it over the course of five years if the NAC accepted its tender bid for the provision of ground handling services at the airport.
In its bid, Paragon projected total revenue of N$110,3 million for the NAC over a five-year period if the airports company awarded the contract to it.
In the case before Ueitele, Menzies Aviation is alleging that Paragon does not have the capacity to carry out ground handling operations at the airport, and claims that Namibia’s aviation industry “stands at the brink of disaster as a result of the NAC’s irresponsible and irrational conduct” in requiring the operations to be handed over to Paragon with less than four days’ notice.
Paragon and the NAC have not yet filed their responses to Menzies Aviation’s allegations at the court.
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