On Sunday May 18, Uganda Airlines made its maiden commercial flight to London (Gatwick). The Airline has had other routes to different destinations (in Africa and Asia), but none of those is quite like the one to London. The flight to Gatwick truly opens Uganda to the world, and brings the world to Uganda.
The city of London alone with its 6 main airports Heathrow (LHR), Gatwick (LGW), Stansted (STN), Luton (LTN), SouthEnd (SEN) and London City (LCY)) handle about 3,200 flights everyday- of course with the big two contributing the highest number – Heathrow and Gatwick handling 1,250 and 760 respectively. London is one of the biggest daily destinations and routes by any standards.
A few years ago, I took, what to date remains my record longest flight – 24 hours, from Entebbe to JFK Airport, New York. The journey started from Entebbe at 4p.m (Uganda Time) on Kenya Airways, arriving at Jomo Kenyatta (Nairobi) one hour later. This section of the journey had a layover of about three hours. At 10p.m (Kenya time), we departed aboard KLM to Amsterdam (Schiphol) arriving 8 hours later. We had a layover of one hour before boarding Air France to Charles de Gaulle (in Paris) for another one hour or so layover. We then embarked on the 8-hour non-stop from Charles de Gaulle aboard Air France to JFK (New York). The journey took a total 24 hours. My colleagues whose destination was the American West Coast (Los Angeles, San Francisco) – had to do even more hours.
People who travelled to the far East – Australia, New Zealand from Uganda in the past, have even more ‘juicier’ travel stories to tell.
A direct flight from Entebbe to a major European destination (like London) means convenience, time and money. If my famous trip above took place today (and I flew out of Entebbe directly to Europe), I would have cut out the 5 hours I spent going to Nairobi (which was not only redundant, but cost me the hours, and a couple of coffees).
I would also have saved my 2-3 hours between Schiphol and Charles de Gaul. My journey could have been shorter by at least 7 hours! And cheaper by a few dollars.
Of course, I would have also dodged the inconvenience of having to board, board off several times, and all the while going through the nagging immigration checks – of removing your belt, your shoes, scanning yourself and your hand luggage.
From an individual traveller’s point of view, Uganda Airlines, is a real deal.
Again, a few years ago, while I worked for a UN Agency, we were organizing a visit of very high-profile people, to a project site in Isingiro, in Western Uganda. The ingenious Prof. Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University (New York) started this site. Prof. Sachs is a friend of so many celebrities who contributed dollar to the project. I remember one of the people who was supposed to visit was Tommy Hilfiger (Yes, he of the Tommy Hilfiger fashion brand). And he was keen on coming to see what his money was doing in Isingiro. The challenge was that, from New York, he was booked for other business meetings in Paris and elsewhere in Europe. His idea was that he would fly by Uganda, on his way, visit the site for a couple of hours, then continue to Europe.
So, his question to us was, would he be able to fly directly from New York to Isingiro, in his private jet, and from there off to Europe after a couple of hours’ visit? Of course, no, he could not. There is no airport in Isingiro. We gave him the ‘best’ option – land at Entebbe, get him onto a chopper to Isingiro, get him back to Entebbe, to catch his jet- to continue with his European leg of the journey. He would not take that drudgery. He cancelled the trip to Uganda.
That is how high value businesspeople think. It does not have to be a private jet, it could even be a commercial airline, but if coming to Uganda means going to Addis Ababa, or Nairobi, waste there a few hours (lazing around), they will cancel the trip.
I also know that when organizing international conferences, the two main criteria for selection of cities/countries to host events (apart from the basic like security) was how many airline connections it takes to arrive at that destination, and availability of (good) hotel rooms. Today Uganda has the hotel rooms, but the connection has been a problem. The Gatwick route now removes that long pending connections’ red eye.
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