New Delhi: In a bid to strengthen direct connectivity between India and Uganda, the state carrier Uganda Airlines plans to offer direct flights to Delhi and Chennai. The move aims at tapping the demand potential across the Indian community with trade links in Uganda along with leisure traffic, a senior executive at the airline told Mint in an interaction.
The airline will launch its first direct flight with the Indian market on 7 Oct with a direct flight between Mumbai and Entebbe. Under the schedule, Uganda Airlines plans to offer direct flights thrice a week with Airbus A330-800 aircraft. The wide-body aircraft will offer a three-class configuration with 210 economy, 28 premium economy and 20 business class seats.
The direct flight will reduce the travel time to five and a half hours from nearly 10 hours earlier as a result of one-stop connectivity.
“India is a critical market for us. We are looking at operating to Delhi and Chennai going forward as these two are in high demand in the outbound air traffic from the African market,” Lenny Malasi, country manager, Uganda Airlines.
Given the demand potential from the two metro cities, the airline may launch three flights a week from Delhi and two flights a week from Chennai to Entebbe going forward.
Uganda Airlines currently operates flights to Dubai, Johannesburg, Bujumbura, Nairobi, Mombasa, Zanzibar, Dar es Salaam, Kilimanjaro, Juba, Kinshasa and Mogadishu. Flights to Lagos, Nigeria, are scheduled to start shortly.
“There is a big community of Indians in East Africa with over 45,000 third-generation Indians in Uganda itself. Since 2017, I have relentlessly pursued the dream of a direct flight from Mumbai to Entebbe, believing it to be the catalyst for enhanced trade, commerce, and tourism between our two nations,” H.E. Madhusudan Agrawal, Hon. Consul of Uganda said.
“There is a lot of travel within Africa as well. While we are offering point-to-point connectivity, we are also developing Entebbe as a hub where we are providing connecting flights across our network,” Malasi added.
The current airline was revived in 2019 with a new fleet of four Bombardier CRJ900 aircraft and two Airbus A330-800 aircraft. Malasi said that the airline is in the process of finalising fleet addition plans and is keen to induct mid-range narrow-body aircraft such as Airbus A321 or Boeing 737 to better suit its network.
The airline is optimistic about the traffic from the Indian market on the back of a robust domestic aviation market which is surpassing the pre-Covid levels, the rising middle-class population with more disposable income and an increased affinity of Indians to explore new destinations abroad.
In fact, India’s largest airline IndiGo launched daily direct flights between Mumbai and Nairobi from August.
“Comparably to many other markets, the Indian clientele is ready to explore. We know that India is hungry for new destinations. We believe we have come to India at the right time,” Malasi said.
“In addition to visiting friends and relatives, we are looking at tourism and MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions) markets,” he added.
Industry experts say that heavy traffic from East African states currently flies through direct flights to India from Tanzania, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Rwanda. As per April-June data from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, 91,334 outbound and inbound international traffic was registered between India and Ethiopia, followed by 58,683 between India and Kenya, 16,660 between India and Tanzania and 3,981 passengers between India and Rwanda.