Uganda Airlines will start commercial operations in August according to the Minister of Works and Transport, Hon Monica Ntege Azuba.
She said that the national carrier will start operations to
Nairobi, Dar-salaam and Mogadishu.
“These destinations will be operated first to orient staff
and service providers on Uganda Airlines procedures and standards. Immediately
after that, other destinations will be added and they include, Kilimanjaro,
Juba, Bujumbura and Mombasa.,” said Ntege Azuba.
Azuba added that after delivery of the additional two
aircrafts in September, Bujumbura, Kinshasa, Khartoum, Addis Ababa, Zanzibar,
Kigali, Harare, Lusaka and Johannesburg will be the other destinations.
The national carrier was expected to start commercial
operations in July 2019 following the arrival of two CRJ900 Bombardier
aircrafts in April.
Azuba said that the airline has been working towards
completing the five-phase certification process required to acquire Air
Operator Certificates(AOC), which shows that the crew can fly safely to any
part of the world.
“This takes approximately 90 days to complete. This informed
the initial timeline to start commercial operations to be July 2019.
Considerable progress has been made and the airline is currently at phase 4,”
said Ntege Azuba.
She added that the targeted date for issuance of the
certificate by Civil Aviation Authority is 28July 2019, ‘meaning that Uganda
Airlines can fly after that date’.
“Bookings, reservations, ticketing and accounting systems
have been activated in a test environment. Issuance of Air Operating
Certificates will trigger activation of codes in a live environment. After
getting live mode, its only then that commercial flights will start,” said
Ntege Azuba.
She also said that the national carrier does not have the
capacity to handle cargo services, and as such, one of the companies operating
at Entebbe international airport has been procured.
“Within this time, Uganda could not set up cargo handling facilities because of shortage of finances and equipment. We advertised and out of the three companies operating cargo handling services, one of them will provide for this,” she added.
The company will later take delivery of two airbus aircrafts that will be used to operate on the long haul routes to Europe and Asia.
