KENYA AIRWAYS TO FINALLY ADD THIRD FLIGHT
While on the islands opportunity arose to also discuss air connections to and from the African mainland with my hosts at the Seychelles Tourist Board, which are grossly under represented compared to now double daily flights by Emirates from Dubai on A340’s and daily flights from Doha on Qatar Airways using the A320. The Seychelles Tourist Board CEO during a meeting today in fact stressed the fact that arrivals to the archipelago from the African mainland were doing well but future growth was limited by the number of seats available between Nairobi and Mahe, the absence of any flights between Tanzania and the Seychelles and also between other Eastern and Southern African countries with the exception of South Africa, where Air Seychelles flies to Johannesburg. Precision Air had expressed interest to start flights to Mahe from Dar es Salaam, just as soon as their fleet expansion programme for jet aircraft has gone underway, but this maybe some time away, leaving the main connections from the Eastern African side of the continent to ‘The Pride of Africa’ for the time being.
It did however emerge during the talk that Kenya Airways was apparently set to add a third flight per week between Nairobi and Mahe from mid of this year onwards, helping the tourism industries of both the Seychelles as well as of Eastern Africa to promote twin centre holidays as well as bring more citizens of the respective countries to make visits to ‘the other side’ across the vast expanses of the Indian Ocean.
