Air France has launched direct flights from Paris to Dar es Salaam, making it the 31st route in Sub-Saharan Africa after a 28-year absence.

Dar es Salaam becomes the second destination in Tanzania, joining Zanzibar where the airline has been operating since October 2021 with two weekly flights into the Abeid Amani Karume International Airport.

The airline will operate three weekly flights to Dar es Salaam using 279-seat 787-9s, its second-smallest wide-body after the A330-200.

In January, the Airline had threatened to cancel the Dar es Salaam route and withdraw from the market following a decision by Zanzibar’s Airports Authority (ZAA) ordering airlines that intend to use Terminal 3 building to sign with Dubai National Air Travel Agency (Dnata), the authority’s preferred ground handler.

It took a diplomatic intervention for Royal Dutch Airlines (KLM) and Air France to continue its operations at the newly built Terminal 3.

By adding Dar, it now means that Nairobi which Air France started in March 2018, will be de-tagged and fully nonstop in both directions.

Currently, four flights are nonstop to Nairobi and three are via Zanzibar.

Read: Indian airline adds Kenya route in global expansionNot surprisingly, booking data shows that the Paris-Dar roundtrip point-to-point market between January and September 2022 was a small 8,500.

It was barely 11,500 for the whole of 2019. It is because of a lack of colonial history with Tanzania, meaning Air France will primarily focus on transit passengers over Paris Charles de Gaulle airport (CDG). It will be the same as KLM over Amsterdam on its 1 daily Dar service and Turkish Airlines over Istanbul on its one daily operation.

In contrast, London, by far Dar's largest European market, remains without nonstop service, although British Airways served it until 2013 using 767-300ERs.

With over 50,000 roundtrip point-to-point (P2P) passengers in 2019, it was a five times larger local market than Paris and four times larger than Amsterdam.

Read: Uganda Airlines to resume Kigali flightsIt remains reliant on one-stops over Amsterdam, Istanbul, Addis Ababa, Nairobi, the Middle East hubs – and soon Paris.

Adding Dar means that Air France's sub-Saharan passenger network rises to 31 airports next summer.

Of European airlines, it is beaten only by Turkish Airlines' 39, helped by its strong use of narrow bodies and geographic position, especially to Central and Eastern Africa, and many one-stops.

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