By Byase Luteke:
When the Government of Tanzania (GoT) decided to built Kilimanjaro
International Airport (KIA) in the 1970s it had one major objective on
its mind; to have an infrastructure that will directly cater for
tourism in the northern tourism circuit regions of Kilimanjaro and
Arusha. At that time the northern tourism circuit was by far the
biggest tourism attraction in Tanzania boasting of the famous
Serengeti National Park, Ngorongoro Conservation Area and Mount
Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa, etc. However, recently
Zanzibar has entered into the world tourism map attracting lot of
tourists and is now seen as one of the major tourism destinations in
the country.
It was anticipated that by constructing a facility like KIA many
airlines especially foreign carriers would fly tourists directly to
KIA instead of transiting circuitously via Julius Nyerere
International Airport (JNIA) or Jomo Kenyatta International Airport
(JKIA). Unfortunately this has not been the case. Out of 19 scheduled
foreign airlines (apart from charters and cargo) that fly into the
country only two airlines namely Ethiopian Airlines (ET) and KLM Dutch
Royal Airlines (KLM) have walked the talk and stayed the course of
making KIA a tourists’ gateway.
Some airlines have tried to land at KIA for the tourism cause but
faltered. For starters, our very own national carrier, Air Tanzania
tried twice to operate intercontinental flights in pursuit of tourists
from Europe and the Indian Sub-continent using KIA as a tourists’ hub
but got nowhere due to poor marketing strategies. As a result one of
ATC’s two leased B707 leased from one Gorge Hallack was grounded at
KIA for a long time and was subsequently sold as a scrap. In 1997 the
defunct Alliance Air introduced the London-Kilimanjaro-Entebbe flight
(once a week) with some success but subsequent management reshuffle at
the airline came with change of strategy and therefore flights to KIA
were taken off-line. Gulf Air also tried to operate flights to KIA in
combination with JNIA but developed cold feet after testing the waters
very briefly. Later on Gulf Air abandoned the East African market
(Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya) altogether because it couldn’t withstand
the heat from its fiercest competitor-Emirates Airlines.
Obviously Kenya Airways (KQ) cannot have the motivation to operate
direct flights to KIA (except on code share flights with Precision
Air) for obvious reasons. Bilateral constraints aside, KQ’s solemn
duty is to promote JKIA as a tourists’ gateway for Kenya and therefore
cannot serve two masters at the same time. Although KQ is the biggest
scheduled operator into JNIA and Zanzibar in terms of flight
frequencies, tourists generally form a small part of its overall
clientele profile in the Tanzanian market. While it’s true that KQ is
aggressively promoting Mount Kilimanjaro trekking, Safari tours to
Serengeti and Zanzibar abroad but not through KIA or Zanzibar gateways
but via JKIA. This is quite different from what ET and KLM are doing.
ET and KLM are the only scheduled airlines of international stature
that are directly and consistently engaged in the promotion of KIA as
tourists’ gateway. From its Addis Ababa hub ET flies directly to KIA
twelve times a week using a B737-800 or 767-300 aircraft and daily to
flights to Zanzibar deploying a B737-800 aircraft. ET also has daily
flights to JNIA. Tourists and other passengers are flown from its
North America, Europe, Middle East and Far East markets into/out of
Tanzania and the airline is very well known (and patronized) for its
pocket-friendly fares. KLM operates daily triangular flights
(Amsterdam-KIA-JNIA-Amsterdam) using a B777 aircraft, the biggest
scheduled passenger airliner to fly into KIA. KLM’s relatively high
fares can be explained by the fact that the airline’s product in on
the high end of the market.
That said, I must say that showering praises on ET and KLM isn’t
intended to take anything away from other airlines that are also
actively promoting Tanzania as a tourism destination. For example,
Emirates Airlines (EK) and Qatar Airways (QR) also deserve credit as
far as tourism development in this country is concerned. These two
carriers have done quite a lot to develop the tourism sector in
Tanzania and this is manifested by the kind of services and traffic
they carry into and out of the country. Indeed EK and QR are amongst
the top players in the Tanzanian air transport market. The only
difference between EK and QR on one hand and ET and KLM on the other
is that the former use JNIA as a tourists’ gateway while the latter
utilize KIA for the same purpose.
I will not be fair to end this discussion without mentioning South
African Airways (SAA) in as far as championing tourism in the country
is concerned. Although Air Tanzania was a pioneer airline (in 1992 )
on the Dar es Salaam-Johannesburg route, it was the coming of SAA (
in1995 )on the scene that opened the floodgate for both passenger and
cargo traffic especially tourists from South Africa to Tanzania
particularly to Zanzibar and the northern tourism circuit. From twice
a week frequencies operated by Air Tanzania in 1995, traffic increased
dramatically boosting the flights on this sector to daily by 2002. To
date there are more than a dozen flights per week between SAA and
Comair (operating as BA). For donkey’s years SAA has been applying to
operate non-stop flights from Johannesburg to KIA to cater for the
tourism market but the authorities in Tanzania have been foot-dragging
for reasons best known to themselves! It’s incomprehensible why SAA is
being denied direct flights to KIA when the airport has slack capacity
that is not optimally utilized. Talk of bilateralism red tape!
With due respect I will not dwell much on the likes of Precision Air,
Rwanda Air and Fly 540 which are also flying to KIA. Precision Air
is mainly carrying domestic traffic to/from this airport and some
spill over interline traffic from foreign carriers. The Rwandese
carrier is essentially a regional carrier so there is very little to
write home about as far as tourism development is concerned. Fly 540
is still a new kid on the block but being a domestic cum regional
airline it can only play as a feeder airline to the big players.
KIA has also seen the increase in charter business for tourism as well
as airfreight (horticultural produce) operations which are helping
this airport to remain relatively busy. However, the fact that charter
operations are had hoc and seasonal in character, it simply means that
this business keeps on fluctuating thus cannot be relied upon.
It’s therefore quite evident from this analysis that KLM and Ethiopian
Airlines deserve praises for keeping KIA vibrant both in terms keeping
passengers traffic flowing through this massive facility as well as
turning it into a tourists’ hub in tandem with the nation’s cherished
objectives. Frankly speaking, without these two airlines KIA would
have ended up being a white elephant.