The airport services company Menzies Aviation (Namibia) has failed with an attempt to suspend the operation of a court order directing the company to stop providing ground handling services at Hosea Kutako International Airport and to vacate the premises it has been using at the airport.
In a judgement delivered in the Windhoek High Court yesterday, judge Shafimana Ueitele dismissed an application by Menzies Aviation (Namibia) to stop the execution of a High Court order given by judge Orben Sibeya on 29 June last year.
Sibeya ordered that Menzies Aviation’s agreement with the Namibia Airports Company (NAC) to provide ground handling services at Hosea Kutako International Airport would end on 30 June last year, and that Menzies was obliged to stop providing the services and vacate any premises it was occupying at the airport at the end of that day.
Menzies Aviation appealed against Sibeya’s decision, but lost its appeal in the Supreme Court on 9 June this year.
In the meantime, the NAC issued a notice on 30 June last year in which it stated that Menzies Aviation would continue to provide ground handling services at the airport “until further notice”, Ueitele noted in his judgement.
That notice, he said, created a new and binding agreement between the NAC and Menzies, and gave Menzies the right to continue to provide ground handling services at the airport.
After the Supreme Court handed down its decision, the NAC notified Menzies that it should stop its ground handling services at the airport and vacate the airport four days later.
In the judgement that he delivered yesterday, Ueitele declared that the NAC’s notice to Menzies on 9 June was not reasonable and thus invalid and set aside.
Ueitele also said 30 days would be a reasonable period for such a notice – as was stipulated in the contract between the NAC and Menzies that terminated at the end of June last year.
The NAC is obliged to give Menzies a reasonable notice for Menzies to stop providing ground handling services at the airport and to vacate the airport, and once that notice has been given to it, Menzies will have no right to remain at the airport and continue to render ground handling services, Ueitele stated.
On Menzies’ application for an order suspending the order that Sibeya gave on 29 June last year and the Supreme Court upheld on appeal, Ueitele noted that the company also asked another High Court judge – without success – in April this year to stop the NAC from ejecting it from the airport.
That application by Menzies was refused, and the court cannot again consider the same application, Ueitele indicated.
Menzies, which had been providing ground handling services at Hosea Kutako International Airport since the start of 2014, is claiming that a decision of the NAC in December 2021 to award a new contract for the provision of the services to a competitor, Paragon Investment Holdings, in a joint venture with Ethiopian Airlines, was irregular and unlawful.
An application in which Menzies is trying to have that tender award reviewed and set aside is still pending before the High Court.
Senior counsel Raymond Heathcote, assisted by John-Paul Jones, is representing Menzies Aviation, instructed by Bennie Viljoen.
The NAC was represented by senior counsel Vincent Maleka, assisted by Unanisa Hengari, on instructions from the law firm Shikongo Law Chambers.
Paragon Investment Holdings was represented by Sisa Namandje and Taimi Ileka-Amupanda.
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