Just when things seemed to be looking up, it is back to the sticks for Air Zimbabwe.

The troubled national carrier has been suspended by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) after failing to renew its security audit registration.

The IATA Operational Safety Audit (IOSA) is the global benchmark for aviation safety management.

The reason curiously is because when the IATA people arrived to conduct the audit, there was noone there to audit. It gets worse. There were no operational aircraft to audit.

Air Zimbabwe has been a bit of a pickle for a while now and earlier this years suspended all regional flights. It is saddled with domestic and external debt. Recently the government took over direct control of the running of the airline.

Do we still have a national airline? Worse yet, for the domestic routes being serviced, how safe is the airline now?