RwandAir battles Air Tanzania for Mumbai route

The Tanzania Civil Aviation Authority (TCAA) has asked Kigali and Dar es Salaam to resolve a dispute over RwandAir’s intention to fly the Mumbai route.

TCCA director-general Fadhil Manongi said the matter has to be decided through bilateral arrangements.

Rwandair Tanzania country manager Hafeez Balogun said in February that the airline was planning to put flights on the Mumbai route, which would have been the first out of East Africa.

But Air Tanzania protested and subsequent talks between the carriers failed.

“We came up with our terms, which we presented to officials from RwandAir, but the terms did not please them, therefore the talks were inconclusive,” Air Tanzania’s commercial director Juma Boma told a Tanzanian daily.

Mr Manongi said Air Tanzania has no right to monopolise routes it is incapable of servicing. The airline operates only one aircraft that flies locally and to Burundi.

“If RwandAir wants to transport passengers from Kigali via Dar es Salaam to Mumbai, then the three countries have to agree; it is a policy issue and not for Air Tanzania to dictate,” Mr Manongi said. “Only a letter from the government will be enough to allow them to operate that route.

“Tactically Air Tanzania has no routes since it has not been in operation for many years. The business mode of monopolising routes existed in the 1980s, when we had only one airline,” he added.

“When Precision Air came here asking to operate Dar es Salaam-Entebbe route, we allowed them, we did not say the route belongs to Air Tanzania. Foreign airlines are allowed to operate here and they cannot be told that Air Tanzania owns the routes,” he added.

In April last year, a statement from the Rwandan Ministry of Infrastructure said RwandAir had received approval from the government of Tanzania to fly between Tanzania and India using the fifth freedom, and that authorities were waiting for approval from the Indian government.

The fifth freedom is the ability for a carrier of country A to carry passengers on an international route solely between country B and country C, when on a multi-leg flight that involves country A.

Efforts to get a comment from Tanzania’s Ministry of Transport proved futile, and Mr Manongo said he was not aware of any approvals for the route.