Tanzania’s ATCL resumes Kigoma flights

The Air Tanzania Company Limited (ACTL) will resume Dar es Salaam-Kigoma daily flights on Thursday, 10th January this year after the services were suspended awaiting renovation of the Kigoma Airport. 

Speaking to reporters in Dar es Salaam yesterday, the ATCL Acting Chief Executive Officer, Captain Milton Lazaro said the company will deploy its Bombardier Dash 8-300 plane with a capacity of carrying 50 passengers to fly the route after the company’s engineers certified to have completed major check-C repair it was undergoing.

“We are now set to resume our Dar es Salaam- Kigoma flights on Thursday 10th January this year and we are also working on implementing our aggressive expansion plans which will see us flying to other destinations which we have not covered at the moment,” he said. Captain Lazaro mentioned that ATCL will soon fly to Tabora and Mpanda once renovation of those airport facilities are completed, hence giving their customers in various destinations a better most preferred airline service. 

“ATCL’s strategic plan to commence flights to Songwe Airport in Mbeya is in a better stage. We expect to start flying passengers to that destination on 20th of January this year as we were still waiting completion of renovation of the airport,” he said. 

According to him, after the launch of Mbeya route, the company will go ahead to start flights to Arusha via Zanzibar by the end of this month, which will be accompanied by flights to Mtwara. “I want to assure our esteem customers that our services are still the best and we offer a very competitive fare to the destinations we fly. 

The completion of this Check-C repair which has been carried out by our local engineers is a great step we have made in the aviation industry in Tanzania as we have proved that we can now offer such services to other airlines with no such capacity. 

We have already entered into agreement with some airlines who are seeking such services and we are ready to offer,” he said. He said the fact that the company’s engineers has successfully completed that kind of repair, ATCL will not only save money being used to send planes abroad for repairs, but also has helped the company to build its engineering capacity. Captain Lazaro said ATCL has plans to add three more planes before the end of this year, mentioning that they will go for Bombardier Dash 8 which are much bigger and with modern advanced technology.