We’re coming into Nigeria to make a difference – Uganda Airlines COO
Mr. Adedayo Olawuyi, Chief Commercial Officer (COO), Uganda Airlines, in this interview with OLUSEGUN KOIKI, spoke about the airline’s plans to commence direct flight service into Nigeria from its base in Entebbe, Uganda, the Nigerian markets, future of Uganda Airlines and the Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM) led by the African Unions (AU). Excerpts:
Sir, the African Governments are pushing for full implementation of the Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM), what is your view about this? The Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM), is the next best thing that is going to happen to the aviation industry in Africa.
As long as we are still having borders that are closed, protectionism and the likes of that, we will not be able to tap into the potential of the 1.4 billion people in Africa.
As we see today, the airline industry in Africa has been dominated expensively by the foreign carriers because intra-Africa travel is very low. So, SAATM is coming to open up the African sky and get the people to fly more, which definitely will enable the people to fly more, balance our trade and ensure a boost in the economy of each other.
This definitely will help the African aviation industry a lot for Africans. Uganda Airlines would make history on Thursday by becoming the first airline from the East African country to operate direct flight into Nigeria, why did you choose Nigeria?
Choosing Nigeria was one of the easiest decisions for us to make at Uganda Airlines. Nigeria being the most populous nation in Africa with a population of over 200 million people, definitely, that is a market we need to have our presence in. Uganda Airlines presently operates from our hub in Entebbe, Uganda in East Africa and we have been looking to open up our operations in West Africa and Nigeria is one of the easiest choices to pick from because of the population and the economy.
Nigeria is the biggest economy in Africa today and it therefore, gives opportunity to people to fly in and be able to benefit from that. That also means that we have a lot of people who fly in and out of Nigeria for different reasons. So, Nigeria as a destination was quite an easy decision for us at Uganda Airlines.
Secondly, as it stands today, there is no direct service between Entebbe and Lagos and we needed to open up Entebbe into Lagos for people to benefit from the big market of trade, tourism and others in Uganda. For a start, how many frequencies do you plan to operate into Nigeria weekly?
We are starting with three weekly flights from Entebbe to Lagos and vice-versa. The flights would be operated on Mondays, Thursdays and Sundays. What aircraft type are you deploying into the Nigerian route?
Uganda Airlines presently has a fleet of six aircraft and they are all brand new.
We have actually won the youngest fleet in the world for two years consecutively; 2021 and 2022. So, we operate a fleet of two Airbus A330-800 and four CRJ900. We will be deploying the A330-800 aircraft to the Nigerian route.
It is a 258 seater aircraft with the configurations of 20 business class, which is the full lie flat bed, 28 seats in premium and 210 in the economy class. Most Nigerian passengers that will be flying with Uganda Airlines may go beyond Entebbe, what are your plans to connect them to their final destinations?
At Uganda Airlines, we presently operate into 12 destinations out of our hub in Entebbe International Airport and we fly to Johannesburg in South Africa, Kenya; Nairobi and Mombasa, Tanzania; Dar es Salaam and Kilimanjaro, Congo (Kinshasa), Burundi (Bujumbura), Somalia (Mogadishu), South Sudan (Juba).
We started operations last week to Mombao in Niger Republic and we also fly into Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
I started with the reeling out of our destinations so that you will understand that we are not operating a point-to-point network. When we commence our flight into Nigeria, we will be able to connect people to all of these 12 destinations that we fly into outside of Entebbe.
We also have interlined partnership with the likes of Qatar Airways, which also distributes our passengers.
Your operations into Nigeria will increase the competition on the route among the existing international airlines, how do you intend to attract passengers to your airline?
We are very much aware of the competition that exists on the route, but we will be the only carrier that is flying directly from Entebbe into Lagos. That in itself is a Unique Selling Point (USP).
For every other person whose final destination is Uganda, today, they will probably have to go to the other hubs in East Africa, but for us, we will be able to operate directly to Entebbe.
However, we will also be able to take people to the other destinations that we operate into by the virtue of transit at Entebbe International Airport. What we intend to do is to use our fantastic service, which is our USP.
We have very great airline service; our aircraft are brand new and the people that fly with us will definitely enjoy the service and be able to relax while they are onboard all our flights.
Today, if you are going from Entebbe to Nigeria flying through any of those hubs, you will spend between nine to 12 hours. We will be reducing the service to just four hours between Entebbe and Lagos. You can tell already that it’s going to be a major selling point for us as an airline.
Uganda Airlines is a rebranded national carrier from the Government of Uganda, what is the intention of the government at a time when most countries are moving away from national carrier?
The new Uganda Airlines was revived in 2019. The intention of the government was to establish a national carrier, which will be able to grow the economy of the country; open up the country to trade, tourism and other businesses.
We learnt from the past mistakes, which is why the management of this one is being managed in a different way unlike the past one.
We have more autonomy now, we have a board, which is directly overseeing the activities of the airline and a lot more expertise has been put into the management team.
The government too has committed itself into this by the purchase of six brand new aircraft to ensure that we do not have the liability of dealing with lessor and all the things that make an airline to collapse.
The support from the government has been very good, which has enabled us to expand to where we are today after just four years of operations.
The intention of the government for the airline is to become profitable in the shortest possible time and this will ensure the longevity of the airline.
What are your plans for fleet expansion?
We are presently in the market looking to get some narrow body aircraft into the operations.
Like I mentioned earlier, we have two aircraft types; Airbus and CRJ. The Airbus is a 258 seater and the CRJ is 76 seater. We already see that we have a gap between these two. We will announce the aircraft type that we will be purchasing to the world in a very short time.
