To date, passenger traffic between the major cities of Dar es Salaam and Nairobi, which have a combined population of over eight million people, has been limited by high air fares which we believe, have excluded large parts of the local population from air travel. The only alternative to flying is to undertake a long and difficult journey by road, which can take up to 12 hours.
The new fastJet service will not only support local demand to/from Dar es Salaam but also provide new connection opportunities to the low-cost carrier’s international flights into Tanzania, significantly offering an alternate link to Johannesburg to support growing leisure demand from South African holidaymakers.
This winter, fastjet will add additional capacity on routes to Johannesburg, South Africa; Harare, Zimbabwe and its recently launched service to Lilongwe, Malawi this winter, as well as increasing its domestic offering to Kilimanjaro and Mwanza.
Although the route is initially scheduled to be flown on a twice weekly basis, fastjet has already hinted that more capacity is expected to be added as demand increases. The airline has already opened reservations for the service with fares starting from $50 one-way, excluding airport and government taxes.
With its low-cost fares, fastjet expects many of its passengers on this new route to be first time flyers who would otherwise not have been able to afford to travel by air. Supporting this expectation is the research undertaken by the airline in December 2014, which showed that 35 per cent of its passengers were first time flyers.
The budget carrier has seen a strong start to the year with its Tanzania business reporting a 52 per cent rise in passenger numbers in May 2015 compared to the same month last year. Over a rolling 12 month period to the end of May 2015, the airline carried 716,350 passengers, up 76 per cent on the previous 12 months.
The mystic spice island of Zanzibar in the Indian Ocean will take the total number of destinations in the airline’s African network to 20 cities. The new destination is a popular island holiday spot for leisure travellers with its white sandy beaches, abundant wild life, rich culture and long history.
Emirates first introduced flights to Dar es Salaam in conjunction with its services to the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. However, in March 2006 the airline initially split the route and introduced its first non-stop flights to the Tanzanian city, later establishing a dedicated daily flight to the destination from December 2006.
Two years can be an eternity for a startup airline and there are examples in East Africa that some did not survive the first two months of operations before folding again. The same cannot be said for Fastjet, Tanzania which celebrating its second birthday.
African low-cost carrier fastjet has taken a significant step towards launching operations in Zambia after its new local business received an Air Service Permit (ASP) from the authorities in Zambia, while fifth freedom rights from Uganda will enable it to grow its network from Entebbe International Airport.
The carrier’s entry into Tanzania is no real surprise as the country is a regional hub for tourism in East Africa and in 2013 the country welcomed over one million tourists. According to the Tanzania Tourism Board (TTB), this figure looks set with to double with two million tourists forecast by 2017.
Etihad Airways treated delegates to an engaging presentation at the 20th World Route Development Forum Strategy Summit, outlining the carrier’s expanded network by the end of 2015, writes Jonny Williamson for The HUB.
The Tanzanian capital becomes the third destination in Air Seychelles’ Indian Ocean and African network, after Mauritius and Johannesburg and the new route will be operated using a two-class Airbus A320 aircraft with 16 Business Class and 120 Economy Class seats.
The airline says forward bookings for the current twice-weekly flights are “well ahead of management expectations” and with the first flights from Zimbabwe already “operating to full capacity”, fastjet has quickly decided to boost the frequency of the link.
