Susan Mashibe
Susan Mashibe,
(Founder and Executive Director of VIA Aviation)
Susan Mashibe, Tanzania’s first female FAA certified pilot and aircraft maintenance engineer, is the founder and Executive Director of Via Aviation, formerly known as Tanzanian Jet Centre (Tanjet), an international operation service providing logistical support for corporate, diplomatic and private jets. Today, her company services clients including oil billionaires and top government officials. It is one of the very few in Africa that support business jets with necessities such as catering and hangar space. At Kilimanjaro International Airport, the company already has 80,000 square feet of hangar space.
Susan Mashibe left Tanzania at 19 to fly jetliners in the US but returned home to help reshape African private air travel after the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001. She had just received her pilot’s license and was applying at Delta Airlines. After September 11, she abandoned plans to work in the US and returned home with $20,000 in funding and decided to start a fixed-base operation in her country.
Susan used all her savings to rent a small office in the Dar es Salaam airport to start her company, TanJet, which provided technical and logistical support to visiting private jets throughout Africa. Her first client was Jacob Zuma, former president of South Africa, who was on a visit to Tanzania.
Her first action was to set up the company to accept credit cards including specialty cards for fuel purchases. Anyone flying a private plane used to have to pay for fuel in advance or carry cash exceeding $20,000.
Companies such as Ms Mashibe’s, known as fixed-based operator, are common in developed countries but just emerging in Africa. The base operators support expanding ranks of airplane-charter companies. VIA Aviation generates revenue of over $2 million, although the company has faced challenges along the way, and Susan has plans to expand the business to more than 20 countries throughout Africa. .
Ms Mashibe is now a recognised leader in business aviation in Tanzania and East Africa. She was a speaker at the Bush Institute African First Ladies Summit in July this year. The Initiative for Global Development (IGD) has announced Ms Mashibe as the first recipient of the Jennifer Potter Emerging Leaders Fellowship Programme. The fellowship focuses on promoting economic opportunity for women. She is also a 2011 World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, an Archbishop Tutu Fellow in 2009 and a 2011 Fortune Most Powerful Woman mentee.
The company is also now a multi-million dollar aviation business and highly regarded around the world. She has achieved all of this in an emerging and largely male-dominated industry in Africa, and her success is a testimony to the power of education, economic empowerment, and self belief. One of the key’s to Susan’s entrepreneurial success in life - she says she has no fear! Simply a deeply held and long-standing passion for aircraft.
Not only is Susan Mashibe an amazing example of a woman entrepreneur making great strides in breaking into the global aviation industry, but she is also inspiring and encouraging a new generation of women aviation across Africa and beyond.
Susan strives to promote education in Tanzania. She is particularly passionate about Maths, Science, and the development of female pupils in her home country.
(Source: African Women Trailblazers , Facebook , https://businesschief.eu/ , lionessesofafrica.com )