Uganda Airlines on Wednesday announced new services to Abuja, Lusaka and Harare in a bid to increase revenue, improve fleet utilisation and position itself for further market expansion.

The Abuja service, operating two times a week, will be launched on September 12, 2024, with Lusaka and Harare to follow two weeks later.

The latter two, operating four times a week, will be a triangular operation alternating between Entebbe-Lusaka-Harare back to Entebbe, and Entebbe-Harare-Lusaka-Entebbe.

The new services would increase the airline's destinations from 13 to 16. They are also expected to increase efficiency by creating a network effect, where the new services feed traffic to other destinations.

“Launching these routes marks the conclusion of our three-year strategic plan, paving the way for the next phase of our 10-year rolling plan,” CEO Jenifer Bamuturaki said.

Abuja, which will add one hour of flying time to the Lagos service, is expected to help the airline tap into traffic from areas around the underserved Nigerian capital.

Nairobi-Abuja is one of the largest underserved markets on the continent. The absence of a direct flight between the two points opens up the possibility of reverse flows from Kenya for its Nigeria service.

Ethiopian and a few North African carriers currently serve Abuja. Ethiopian, which is the only link between Abuja and East and Southern Africa, enjoys a monopoly that has made Abuja-Entebbe one of the most expensive routes on the continent.

“Our aspiration is to bridge the geographical gaps and connect East to West, North and South of Africa. This vision guides our route expansion, which is informed by feasibility studies pointing us to underserved routes,” Ms Bamuturaki said while defending the decision to expand into what some perceive as grey markets fraught with commercial risk.

The airline is looking at Lusaka and Harare to feed into its services to West Africa, the Middle East, India and later China and the United Kingdom.“The entry into these markets is meant to build an efficient an optimised regional market, which will feed and finance a more profitable long-haul market; grow the aircraft fleet utilisation, create a robust regional network that will serve as a feeder for the Uganda Airlines’ long-haul market, especially London, Mumbai, Guangzhou and Dubai and, most importantly, support Uganda Airline’s Africa network connectivity,” Ms Bamuturaki said.

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