African low-cost carrier fastjet has revealed the first stage of its network growth following its successful launch in November last year. The carrier will join the dots on its existing route map with daily flights between Kilimanjaro and Mwanza as well as introducing a fourth destination with daily flights from Kilimanjaro to Zanzibar. These new services will come online from March 16, 2013.

fastjet initially launched flights to Kilimanjaro and Mwanza from its base at Dar Es Salaam’s Julius Nyerere International Airport. These routes have performed really well for the budget start-up and are now being served three times daily. In this past week fastjet recently celebrated handling its 75,000th passenger and in honour of the achievement has chosen to name one of its Airbus A319 fleet after the milestone passenger, Mrs Veronica Chuwa of Mwanza.

“This is another great milestone in fastjet’s drive to open up air travel to countless Tanzanians who previously could not afford to fly,” said Kyle Haywood, General Manager, fastjet. “Since the start of our operations in November last year, the number of passengers booking flights with fastjet has been consistently high, with an average load factor of over 70 per cent. This is testament to the genuine demand for low-cost air travel among the people of Tanzania.”

The two new routes from Kilimanjaro International Airport will firmly position the carrier as one of the prominent operators from the facility. fastjet already holds a 19.2 per cent share of the available seat capacity from Kilimanjaro based upon flight schedules this month, but the introduction of the two additional daily flights from next month will see this share rise to 39.9 per cent, only slightly below facility’s leading operator, Precision Air, which holds a 43.0 per cent capacity share.

“This is another great milestone in fastjet’s drive to open up air travel to countless Tanzanians who previously could not afford to fly.  Since the start of our operations in November last year, the number of passengers booking flights with fastjet has been consistently high, with an average load factor of over 70 per cent.  This is testament to the genuine demand for low-cost air travel among the people of Tanzania.”

Kyle Haywood
General Manager, fastjet

fastjet will directly compete with Precision Air on both of its new routes from Kilimanjaro, while Air Tanzania also has schedules in the GDS for the Mwanza link and Ethiopian Airlines serves Zanzaibar as a continuation on some of its flights from Addis Ababa hub. In 2012 an estimated 33,000 bi-directional O&D passengers travelled between Kilimanjaro and Mwanza and approximately 47,000 between Kilimanjaro and Zanzibar.

According to fastjet’s management both routes have been highly requested by passengers and Tanzanian travellers. “Many of you have requested these routes, and we’re excited to be able to now offer you these new daily flights,” it said in a statement confirming this latest route expansion.

“fastjet are very proud to be expanding our routes further across our first home in Tanzania. We’ve received huge support from all our customers, are committed to employing locally and enabling everyone to fly. We’re positively looking to increase our routes all the time, including introducing new international as well as domestic routes, and want to have a positive impact on low cost air travel in East Africa,” the statement added.