Car hire at Chileka Airport: the arrivals desk and meeting your flight

Blantyre’s airport was renamed Bakili Muluzi International Airport in 2026. Almost everybody still calls it Chileka, after the township it sits in, and almost every search for it still uses that name. Both are correct and both refer to the same place: airport code BLZ, the international gateway to southern Malawi.

If you are reading a booking confirmation with one name and a road sign with the other, they are the same airport.

R&H operate a staffed desk inside the terminal, in the arrivals hall. This is the part worth understanding before you compare hire options, because most car hire in Malawi is a phone number rather than a counter.

The difference shows up in two situations. The first is arriving without a booking — with a desk in the building there is somewhere to go and a person to ask, rather than a call to place and a car to wait for. The second is when something goes wrong mid-hire: a business with a fixed presence inside an international airport is accountable in a way that a mobile number is not.

It also means the cars are where you are. Every vehicle is parked at the airport and collected from the desk, so there is no shuttle to a yard and no trip into Blantyre before you have transport.

Both work. Walking up is genuinely supported — that is what a staffed counter is for — but the fleet is six vehicles, so on any given day the one you had in mind may already be out. If your trip depends on a particular vehicle, book it.

That is most true of the eight-seat Toyota Voxy. There is one of it. Groups arriving together with luggage should treat it as something to reserve rather than something to hope for, and group transfers is the page for that.

Booking ahead costs nothing and commits you to nothing: send the dates and the journey and we reply with a quotation. Nothing is charged until you have agreed the price.

Send your flight number when you book. We will confirm whether the desk will be staffed for that arrival — and if it will not be, we will say so rather than let you find out on landing.

That caveat is deliberate. The desk is open during airport operating hours, and the airport is not open around the clock. Any hire company that promises a 24-hour counter at Chileka is describing something other than what is there. For a late arrival, tell us the flight and we will arrange an airport transfer or a collection that actually works, rather than one that assumes a counter is open.

Your driving licence — Malawian, foreign or an International Driving Permit, held for at least a year. Your Visa card if you are paying at the desk, or the transfer reference if you paid by TT before arrival. And the flight number, if you sent one, so we can match you to the booking.

You do not need a security deposit. The full hire amount is payable before the vehicle is released and every client is vetted, which is what replaces the deposit rather than sitting alongside it.

If you are deciding on the spot, the questions are how many of you there are, how much luggage you have, and where you are going.

For one or two people staying in town, the Honda Fit is the cheapest to hire and the cheapest to run, and on a longer hire fuel matters more than the headline day rate. For a family or an executive arrival, the Toyota Vanguard is the automatic SUV most clients end up in. For a full party and their bags, the Voxy. For anywhere the tarmac stops, the Toyota Hilux double cab.

Ask, and we will tell you which one honestly suits the journey — including when the cheaper one does.

Chileka sits outside Blantyre, and the run into the city is the first drive of most visits. If you would rather not make it yourself on arrival, that is exactly what chauffeur drive is for: take the car with a driver for the first day and switch to self drive once you have your bearings.

Transfers run in both directions and to any destination — a Blantyre hotel, an address in Limbe, or a long-distance run up the M1. Vehicles are matched to the passenger and luggage count.

Return is to the same desk in the arrivals hall. Bring the vehicle back fuelled to the level you collected it at, and allow for the fact that a late return is charged as a full additional day rather than pro rata.

If your flight leaves outside airport counter hours, tell us when you book and we will agree how the handover works rather than leaving it to the morning.