TANZANIA: Fastjet gets Rights To Fly To Comoros But Kenya Still Refuses

Tanzania’s largest airline in terms of passengers uplifted, has secured traffic rights between Dar es Salaam and the Prince Said Ibrahim International Airport on the Comoros main island of Moroni.

Information sourced speaks of initially two flights per week between the Tanzania and the Comoros, which will increase as demand for seats and cargo goes up.

This makes it Fastjet’s sixth African destination out of Dar es Salaam after Johannesburg, Lusaka, Harare, Entebbe and Lilongwe, while their application for landing rights in Nairobi continues to gather dust in the deepest dungeons of Kenya’s Civil Aviation Authority.

‘Other countries want us to fly to their capitals’ said a source close to the airline before adding ‘Why the Kenyans do not want Fastjet to fly there remains a complete mystery. All prerequisite criteria have been met, all the boxes have long been ticked but it seems that the KCAA is now changing the size of these boxes and wants crosses instead of ticks? Are they for real?

They are setting the worst possible example for the opening of the African airspaces. Have they ever heard of Yamoussoukro or the fact that Kenya signed on to the AU protocol about liberalizing air transport?. Their protectionism will come back to haunt them when TCAA again enforces the present BASA’.

Fastjet in Zambia is also reportedly now very close to attaining their Air Operator Certificate which will allow them to launch flight operations out of Lusaka, presently served daily in conjunction with Harare.

The Zimbabwean launch at the end of October proved highly successful with already over 3.500 seats sold on the route between Harare and Victoria Falls. Discussions with the CAAZ are reportedly continuing about adding Bulawayo and Johannesburg as next destinations, after Fly Africa continues to postpone their relaunch following their grounding by the CAAZ when their local partners handed in the airline’s AOC at the end of October. Sources close to the airline in Harare have confirmed that once the additional routes have been secured that an additional Airbus A319 aircraft will be deployed to Zimbabwe more or less immediately to have enough aircraft on the ground to serve the additional destinations.