The arrival of the budget airline is
seen as a blessing as the numbers of air passengers has increased.
Precision Air said its services are not
shaken by the coming of the budget airline, but has rather
“consolidated” its position at the poll as the leading carrier in the
country.
On other hand, FastJet also said their first month in business
last December was “fantastic” which demonstrated the demand for budget
airline in the country.
Some quarters in the society have it
that the traditional carriers would suffer a huge passengers shift from
the existing ones to the low cost airline but the travellers trend prove
them wrong.
Precision Air’s Head of Revenue Management Elvis Ndomo said
the coming of the new player did not interrupt their frequencies to any
route, but instead achieved a load factor of over 80 per cent.
“We did not reduce frequencies in
December,” Mr Ndomo said “as a matter of fact our frequencies are intact
while we achieved a good number of uplifted passengers, during that
period.”
It is estimated that PW has over 300 departures a week from Dar
es Salaam to 18 destinations in and outside the country, the majority
being from Dar es Salaam to Kilimanjaro, Dar-Arusha, Dar- Mwanza and
Dar-Nairobi.
Commenting on the December services,
FastJet Chief Executive Officers Mr Ed Winter, said the budget carrier
achieved a 78.9 per cent load factor by carrying almost 30,000
passengers.
“This is a fantastic result for the first month of FastJet
operations and clearly demonstrates the latent demand for low cost
reliable air travel in Africa,” Mr Winter said.
He added: “Press concerns over
infrastructure have proved unfounded with no scheduled Fast- Jet flights
cancelled and 99.6 per cent arriving within 15 minutes of schedule.”
Despite being outdated the Tanzania Civil Aviation Authority (TCAA) data
shows that at the end of 2011 Precision Air had a lion market share of
58.8 per cent. The second on line was Coastal Travel controlling 21.8
per cent while Air Tanzania managed to bagged 0.4 per cent in 2011.
The chart, however is expected to change
after the entry of FastJet late last year. The third and fourth were
Zan Air and Auric Air controlling 4.2 and 2.0 per cent respectively
while the remaining 12.8 per cent is shared with other airlines.
According to Wolfganghthome’s Blog , that captures air travel and
hospitality service, Precision Air has a solid market base already and
offers more flights to both Kilimanjaro and the Arusha Municipal air
field, as well as Mwanza.
“A further benefit of (PW) having a
sizeable turboprop fleet is the ability to fly to a number of
destinations where larger jets cannot land, leaving a company like
FastJet out in the cold as they only operate Airbus aircraft which are
restricted to the main airports,” the Blog indicates.
Wolfganghthome’s
Blog added: “I think we shall see a strategic game of chess in the skies
now.
FastJet will only be able to offer two
or three, at best perhaps four departures between Dar and Kilimanjaro
and Mwanza.
“But with their fares they need almost full house on every
flight to make the ends meet. Precision has the flexibility to use ATR’s
and offer a lot more departure times because they use smaller planes in
Tanzania and the region”.
On other hand the blogger said Air Tanzania’s
fares right now are not much higher over those top fares by FastJet and
who knows what government will scheme up to give the national airline
competitive advantages.
TCAA Director General Mr Fadhili Manongi
said one of the authority’s responsibilities to create conducive
economical environment to enable air players to offer competitive
prices.
“Fair competition at the end of the day benefit passengers-and
this is our end goal,” Mr Manongi said.
The favourable environment
includes maintaining the Dar es Salaam air safety to the highest
standard according to the International Civil Authority Organisation
benchmarks.
For instance, last year, the country
experienced a total of 16 accidents and incidents with no casualties
registered.
“This makes our air space safer. Actually, we are ranked
above average by ICAO that puts us at par with many first world
airspaces, the likes of UK, US and Canada,” Mr Manongi said.
TCAA data
shows that on average there is an increase of 4.5 per cent of total
flights handled per year.
The Dar es Salaam centre leads with 2.5
per cent increase that is 206,334 flights handled.
“True that is, but
let’s wait for that battle in the Tanzanian skies to commence and see
how all this will unfold,” the blogger Wolfganghthome’s concluded.
The Daily News,www.dailynews.co.tz, reported by Abduel Elinaza in Dar es Salaam
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