Uganda Airlines commercial flights resumption reactivated in August 2019 after almost 18 years since close of flight operations in the region and across continents. The Inaugural flight for the CRJ-900 Bombadier series was destination Kenya where the Airlines embarked on its first regional route landing at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport and welcomed with a water salute.
Few months down the road, Covid-19 spread across the globe and affected the Aviation industry as many Countries closed Airports although Passenger flights were temporarily halted but Uganda Airlines after several discussions with Government, Repartriation and Cargo flights continued even during lockdown not forgetting flights for medical emergencies.
The CRJ-900 Bombadier series stand a great pillar for the regional carrier although, plans to have the A330-800neo Airbus delivered are on as they are prospected to arrive within this December. The A330-800neo Airbus will be scheduled for long-haul flights covering distant destinations operating commercial passenger flights at intercontinental level.
Currently, Uganda Airlines boasts of close to 152,000 seats across nine destinations in six countries, OAG data reveals.
Nairobi is so far the top tier destination with almost one-third of the Airlines capacity, seconded by Juba (19%), and Dar Es Salaam (14%). Together, these three have almost two-thirds of the airline’s seats.
More specifically, Uganda Airlines’ nine destinations have 48 weekly services in the week beginning 4 January. Nairobi is top with 13, then Juba with 10, and Dar Es Salaam with seven (the latter triangularly via Zanzibar or Kilimanjaro). All of the rest are three-weekly.
Johannesburg joins the list of scheduled flight destination as this route, London, China among other destinations will be operated using the A330-800neo Airbus although details on the routes are yet to be established by Uganda Airlines.
Uganda Airlines’ main hub – Entebbe is the sixth-largest market with approximately 56,000 point-to-point passengers last year, booking data from OAG Traffic Analyser shows.
South African Airways ended the route in early 2020; it was served six-weekly using Embraer 190s and had a block of about four hours. It’ll be almost exactly 1,000 kilometres longer than Uganda Airlines’ currently longest route, Kinshasa.
Long Haul flights operation and viability
Uganda Airlines currently has plans to operate commercial passenger flights on major international routes across several continents operating both daily and weekly flights thereby connecting to Top unserved routes on a point-to-point and non-stimulated basis to/from Entebbeas these include; London (84,000 round-trip passengers in 2019), Mumbai (42,000), and Guangzhou (29,000). All have been mentioned by the carrier.
If Uganda Airlines is keen to develop Entebbe into a hub, as appears to be the case, it will need to strongly coordinate services to benefit from transit traffic, although this is of course lower-yielding.
Assuming it does properly coordinate its nine routes, London’s transit traffic potential –excluding non-stop passengers who are unlikely to switch – exceeds 245,000, Mumbai 112,000, and Guangzhou 79,000.
Meanwhile, Johannesburg – which is coming – surpasses 106,000, while it’s 103,000 for Dubai, which is rumoured destination.
Not surprisingly, Guangzhou is low-yielding and performs pretty poorly by fare, although China – Africa had over 2.5 million passengers in 2018. Despite being 86% longer than Mumbai, its fare is just 13% higher.
Guangzhou also has a smaller local market and lower potential connecting demand than Mumbai.
London is the most obvious for P2P demand, connecting demand, and for fare performance. On this basis alone, it would be strange if it didn’t happen. Likewise, Mumbai, Johannesburg, and Khartoum.
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