AEROLINK SPREADS WINGS TO MBARARA
(Posted 21st November 2019)
Aerolink Uganda has just announced that the airline will begin to serve the Mbarara airfield with daily scheduled flights, come next year.
During the two rainy seasons in April and May and then again in November this flight will however not operate.
The airline is combining the stop in Mbarara with their flights to Queen Elizabeth National Park but can, depending on demand, also be served in conjunction with other destinations in Uganda’s western and southwestern region.
This new stop will for the first time allow visitors of the Emburara Farm Lodge to arrive by air and with the Mbarara airstrip just 2 kilometres away from the lodge, this will be the easiest way to reach. The lodge does provide pick up and drop off services with their own vehicles at a nominal cost.
Passengers on this flight can now also reach with greater ease the Lake Mburo National Park, using the new Mbarara bypass highway to get on the fast track to both park and lodges.
After a stay at either Lake Mburo National Park or at the Emburara Farm Lodge can passengers then fly on to Queen Elizabeth, Semliki or Bwindi, for the first time opening up Uganda’s national parks in the west and south west of the country with air connections throughout. Direct return flights to Entebbe are of course also available.
This development is putting Uganda now at level par vis a vis air connectivity to the key parks and attractions across the country with Kenya and Tanzania, where air safaris have long been part of the offerings in order to attract the kind of visitors who like to cut down on road transfers and prefer to spend their limited time in the parks – and are ready to pay for it.
Aerolink Uganda has been pioneering flying safaris in Uganda with bringing scheduled flights to such destinations like Murchisons Falls and Kidepo Valley national parks, reducing the overall cost from the rather more expensive charters to simply buying tickets for the respective routes. While flights to Kidepo presently operate on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday are all other destinations served with daily departures.
Aerolink, in conjunction with Air Kenya, is also the only airline group to offer a seamless Masai Mara and Bwindi experience, linking the game rich plains of the Masai Mara with the mountain gorillas of Bwindi. This opens gorilla tracking in Uganda to tourists first visiting Kenya, cutting out time consuming road transfers and the equally time consuming need for first getting back to Nairobi.
Tourists visiting Uganda first on their safari itinerary can also take advantage of this flight option by flying from Entebbe – via the Kenyan lakeside city of Kisumu for immigration clearance – directly to the Masai Mara and such make it an experience of a lifetime without having to first fly to Nairobi and then change airports to reach the Masai Mara.
