(Posted 24th January 2026)
(Courtesy of Derek Nseko)
What Africa Must Learn from a National Airline in Crisis
I would like to say it is rare for a national institution as symbolically important as a flag carrier to become the subject of both public frustration and formal criminal inquiry, but that is exactly where Uganda Airlines, once the pride of a resurgent African aviation agenda, finds itself at the start of 2026. In recent weeks, headlines have shifted from schedule disruptions and fleet strains to allegations of abuse of office, false accounting and embezzlement of funds, as Uganda’s Criminal Investigations Directorate (CID) and State House Anti-Corruption Unit move beyond commentary and into action with a formal request for detailed financial records and procurement files from the airline’s leadership. What was, for many, a story of structural underperformance has now become an unequivocal indictment of executive mismanagement. It is a remarkable fall for a national carrier that, since its 2019 revival, has been as much a political project as an economic flagship. And as Uganda goes to the polls this week, it has become, in the eyes of the public, a symbol of what government ownership and control represents.
In my eyes, the state-owned carrier’s public perception was doomed from the day a letter from the president instructed the minister of transport to appoint a hand picked CEO, ultimately undermining a process that had been initiated by the board.
For years, I have been cautious about the most sensational headlines surrounding our national carrier. I have written extensively especially in Uganda’s national press trying to educate, to fill information gaps, and to separate what is structural and predictable from what is negligent and avoidable. I have maintained that many of the airline’s operational challenges were not mysterious. They were foreseeable. In that sense, they were preventable.
But the story now unfolding is no longer just about predictable structural strain. It has become something darker and far more embarrassing.
Disruptions galore and CAA’s investigation
Over the past month, Ugandans have watched one of the loudest public outcries in the airline’s short history spill across social media, radio, television and even the most informal of settings. Complaints about delays and cancellations became so common that the airline became something of a public joke.
Even external oversight bodies have begun to respond. The Uganda Civil Aviation Authority (UCAA) has indicated it would investigate Uganda Airlines following a series of disruptions particularly through the December period citing the frequency and impact of delays and cancellations as grounds for additional scrutiny while noting there were no immediate safety concerns.
I do not believe that there will be an investigation of any noteworthy integrity from another questionable state-controlled institution so I will leave the the rest of the public to cross their proverbial fingers. But the fact here is that reliability has degraded to a point where oversight must ask whether operational systems, resourcing, and planning are aligned with the schedule being sold to the public.
What has become harder to defend is the absence of strategic intervention and communication discipline once those disruptions became recurring. The response from leadership has been particularly disappointing.
The predictable structural trap
There is a version of this crisis that can be told without scandal, one rooted in fleet economics, utilization, route planning, and the brutal mathematics of running long-haul services with limited redundancy.
when a carrier commits widebody aircraft to multiple long-haul routes with high frequency and minimal spare capacity, the operation becomes fragile. One aircraft goes AOG, and everything else cascades.
This is not unique to Uganda Airlines. It is a classic constraint facing small fleets with big-network ambitions. It is one reason airlines scale cautiously, build buffers, and match schedule promises to operational reality.
But if Uganda Airlines’ troubles were only structural, the national conversation would still be heated, just not catastrophic. Because structural problems invite technical solutions: adjust frequencies, suspend routes temporarily, lease lift, rebuild schedule integrity, stabilize customer communication, protect the brand.
Instead, the airline’s storm has intensified because now the public is being asked to absorb operational failure at the same time as investigators probe alleged misconduct inside the very executive system meant to protect taxpayer investment.
The letter that changes the story
On January 7, 2026, Uganda Police’s Criminal Investigations Directorate (CID), working with the State House Anti-Corruption Unit formally wrote to Uganda Airlines’ CEO requesting extensive records to aid an investigation into alleged abuse of office, embezzlement of funds, and false accounting connected to the airline’s financial transactions.
This development shifts the narrative massively from growing pains to governance failure.
According to reporting by the Daily monitor, investigators requested board-approved plans and budgets, procurement documentation, and detailed revenue and banking records. The article notes that the letter seeks, among other things, contracts committee minutes linked to Boeing aircraft acquisition, procurement files for key suppliers (including fuel and other services), internal audit reports, ticketing and revenue accounting records, banking and cash receipts, and a list of companies that supported the launch of the airline’s London route.
The Ugandan public doesn’t need to be an investigator to understand what this means. The national airline is not a private startup playing with its own money. Uganda Airlines is a public project, built with taxpayer funding, defended on national strategic value, and repeatedly justified as a long-term investment in connectivity, trade, and tourism.
When a criminal directorate is asking for internal audit reports, ticketing records, banking receipts, fuel supplier transactions, and procurement files, it is not looking for minor administrative errors. It is looking for the financial story of the airline, where money moved, who authorized it, and whether governance systems did their job.
The London route
Uganda Airlines’ London Gatwick service was never just another route. It was symbolic. Our return to Europe, our claim to relevance, our proof that Uganda could operate long-haul and compete in markets where reputations are made or broken.
It was also expensive. Long-haul flying is unforgiving even for established carriers with deep fleets, mature networks, and optimized cost bases. For a small airline still building operational maturity, long-haul is a stress test.
I have written before that the route was a poisoned chalice in more ways than one.
That stress test has now become central to the inquiry. Investigators are asking for “a list of companies which supported the launch” of the London route, according to the reporting. That question is not routine. It points to sponsorships, partnerships, promotional support, and potentially relationships that may require scrutiny. According to some sources, the airline spent an eye-brow raising amount in the millions of dollars on the route launch alone.
If Uganda Airlines wanted London to be its moment of arrival, it may now become one of the moments that defines the airline’s governance crisis.
Fuel, procurement and bleeding money
Any serious audit of airline wrongdoing almost always circles back to two areas: procurement and fuel.
Fuel is typically the biggest cost area for airlines. Procurement, especially where contracts, travel services, ground handling, and suppliers are involved is where opacity and favoritism can quietly become normalized. In the Uganda Airlines case, investigators’ interest in procurement records and supplier transactions signals that they are looking at the arteries of airline spending, not the decorative parts.
Deeper questions are also being asked around aircraft purchases and leasing contracts that are suspicious to say the least.
Uganda airlines CEO, Jenifer Bamuturaki and CCO, Adedayo Olawuyi pose with airline cabin crew at the launch of Abuja-Lusaka-Harare routes
From Structural Failure to Executive Impunity
At this point, it is no longer credible to treat Uganda Airlines’ predicament as a purely structural problem.
For months, passengers and the public have been asked to absorb persistent disruptions with little evidence of decisive leadership response. Operational explanations have been offered, but strategic correction has been conspicuously absent. There has been no visible recalibration of schedules to fleet realities, no sustained improvement in customer communication, and no sense that executive leadership fully grasps the reputational damage being inflicted on a national institution
It is difficult to avoid a conclusion that many in the industry are already drawing privately: another executive clear-out at Uganda Airlines now appears not just possible, but likely. If it occurs, it will be the second such purge in less than 5 years, and under disturbingly similar circumstances. At that point, the problem can no longer be dismissed as bad luck or transitional instability. It becomes a pattern.
This is why the moment is so grave. Uganda Airlines’ greatest vulnerability is no longer its fleet size, route economics, or cost base. It is credibility.
The tragedy is not that Uganda Airlines has struggled. Many young airlines do. The tragedy is that the same governance failures appear to be repeating themselves, with escalating consequences. And unless this moment forces a deeper reckoning, not just a reshuffling of executives but a hard reset of accountability, the cycle will almost certainly repeat again. I am not hopeful that it will not.
What Uganda Airlines teaches Africa, again
Uganda Airlines is not the first African carrier to face the collision of ambition, politics, and governance weakness. Across the continent, we have seen airlines used as national trophies, expanded too quickly, managed too politically, and protected too reflexively until crisis forces intervention.
The hard lesson is this: Africa’s airline industry doesn’t only struggle because of fuel prices, infrastructure constraints, and thin markets. It also struggles because governance failure is often allowed to sit at the heart of national aviation projects for too long.
