Excitement, anxiety as Uganda prepares to revive national airline

After an over 20 years wait, Ugandans will tomorrow proudly see the resurrection of its national airline with the arrival of two bombardier CRJ900 jets.

These are the first of a four jet consignment valued at over Shs 700 billion from Canadian Jet manufacturer Bombardier Commercial Aircraft.

After the planes arrive, they are expected to have an over 3 month lull as certain certifications that require physical presence of jets on land take place.

During the same period, the cabin crew and pilots will be trained.

Susan Kataike, the ministry of Works and Transport spokesperson, said they expect the longest certification process to take about 90 days and therefore expect that the first commercial flight will be around July 2019.

The airline will operate under the name Uganda Airlines after confirmation from Uganda Registration Services Bureau (URSB) that the name was free for use.

But with speculation of Uganda’s routes having been sold off, what is at stake?

"Uganda never sold its routes, we still own them and our regional routes will include Nairobi, Dar-es-salaam, Mombasa, Juba, Khartoum, Kigali, Johannesburg, Addis ababa, Harare, Lubumbashi among others," Kataike asserted.

However, this doesn’t mean that Uganda Airlines will only ply regional routes.

Kataike said two Airbuses are expected in 2020 and these will be used to ply international routes.

Various partnerships are also being discussed to enable smooth flow to different routes both within and outside.

As more jets come in, there will be a very busy schedule at the Entebbe international airport but do we have the capacity to manage the situation and expectation?

Vianney Lugya, the spokesperson of the Civil Aviation Authority explained that the airport has the capacity to handle the upsurge in flights.

He pointed to the 2017 CHOGM that saw construction of parking Apron 4 which has capacity of up to 60 medium sized aircrafts.

Entebbe international airport has had a steady traffic growth of 7.9% annually. In 2018, the airport handled 1.84 million international passengers a rise from 1.65 million passengers in 2017.

The traffic flow means that the airport handled an average of 5,027 passengers and 81 aircrafts per day last year.

"By the end of 1st phase which runs 2016 – 2021,we anticipate to handle a minimum of 3.5 million international passengers per year," Lugya said.

As the excitement over the jets rises, affordability of the tickets comes to mind putting into consideration the operational and maintenance costs needed to keep the airline afloat.

However ministry of works assures of affordable competitive rates compared to the other operators.

Kataike said Ugandans should not be worried about when the airline will break-even but embrace and support it.

She said that since this project is one of the flagships programmes on the NRM manifesto, they will do all it takes to keep the airline afloat whether it requires government’s subsidisation until the airline turns in a profit.

To many now, the focus is on the management of the airline with questions of how it will insulate itself from repeating the past mistakes that saw the dissolution of the airline in 2001.

Uganda Airlines isn’t the only airline expected to hit the turf at the Entebbe international airport this year.

CAA revealed they are in talks with German airlines including Condor which expected to commence operations in September 2019.