UGANDA AIRLINES MAIDEN FLIGHT RESCHEDULED FOR END OF AUGUST
Uganda Airlines has rescheduled its inaugural flights from the earlier planned and communicated 31st July to end of August. This development is due to the hold-up in securing one of the requirements- the Air Operator Certification (AOC) which authorizes any aircraft to operate commercial flights and is expected to be acquired by 28th July.
This announcement was made by Eng. Monica Azuba to the Parliament and according to her communication, the postponement is because the revived National Carrier has not yet secured an Air Operating Certificate from the Civil Aviation Authority. Once the Certificate is acquired, operations will officially begin given the fact that other required reparations such as ticketing, booking, and accounting systems have been put in place although are still in test mode. These systems were put in line with the provisional IATA designator and Codes.
“Once the Air Operating certificate is issued, it will be forwarded to IATA and the activation of the accounting codes will be automatically activated to the live mode/ or environment”. Said Azuba. This will make the
Uganda Airlines flight codes to be automatically added to the IATA system and be visible to the entire world and in this case, the countries the National carrier will be flying to. As of now, the National carrier is using a provisional certificate to test the aircraft’s as well as setting up procedures that allow reservations, booking, and ticketing.
In addition to the Air Operating Certificate, the National Carrier is also supposed to acquire licenses from the countries it plans to fly to and foreign Air operator permits before starting operations. According to Azuba, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has already written to the countries the Uganda Airlines expects to fly to and response is expected with 30 days after the Air Operating Certificate has been received hence the reason flights will start in late August.
The first planned destinations are Nairobi, Juba, Mogadishu, Dar-es-Salam, Mombasa, Kilimanjaro, and Bujumbura while other countries such as South Africa and Rwanda are expected to be added on the list of destinations once the remaining aircraft arrive into the country. According to Minister Azuba, the Air Operating Certificate is acquired through a series of 5 procedures that include the formal application for the AOC, Evaluation of the document followed by a demonstration, then inspection and finally operationalization.
The demonstration stage usually takes more time because it requires first demonstrating competence as well as capability in different things hence the delay. Other important procedures are purchasing and transporting aircraft spare parts, contacting airport services within the destinations within the regional network, testing and implementing the different airline systems and setting up the offices within the different destinations among others.
Established in the 1970s, Uganda airlines used to operate a number of scheduled flights within the African Continent, Middle East, and Europe before being liquidated in 2001 after attempts to privatize it proved futile. Plans for its revival started in 2013 and 2019 is the year when it will finally hit the skies and fly to different destinations in Africa and beyond. The first two Bombardier CRJ-900 aircrafts with passenger-carrying capacity of 76 were acquired in April and are set to start with 7 regional destinations while the remaining two are expected to arrive in the country in September and target the other African destinations as well as long-haul destinations such as New Delhi, London, Dubai and Bangkok among others.
