Tanzania: Boost Low-Cost Carriers to Tap Tanzania Aviation Potential

Tanzania is a vast country, with strategic towns and cities situated thousands of kilometres apart. As we do everything possible to attain the Middle Income Economic status by 2025 it is time we tackled the
issue of accessibility of our towns. And it is at this juncture where the aviation sector comes into play.

Businesspeople, big and small, who need to shuttle between various towns and cities find it too costly to spend more than 10 hours travelling from Tanga to Mbeya, for example. It is a wastage of time. And in the business world time is money. What if there were low cost airlines plying the vast Tanzanian territory?

Cheap flights would help businessmen and women save time and could, in the long-run, translate into real gains in doing business in Tanzania.

There have been low cost airlines operating in the country before, but they have had to close shop for various reasons, including, what some stakeholders say, is the lack of appropriate investment climate. Some of the issues include exorbitant fees and levies that airlines have to pay to operate in the country.

For example, airlines have to pay passenger service charges that stand at Sh10,000 and $40 for domestic and international passengers respectively; security fees of Sh5,000 for local travel tickets and $5 for international travel per passenger; 12 hours parking charges of Sh1,000 for aircraft of up to 20,000kg registered in Tanzania and $5 for airlines registered outside the country; landing charges levied at $5 for every 1,000kg of the aircraft at Dar es Salaam, Kilimanjaro, Zanzibar, and Pemba airports.

If that was not enough, airlines in Tanzania have to deal with a host of regulatory agencies, in addition to the Tanzania Civil Aviation Authority and the Tanzania Airports Authority. They also have to deal with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha), National Environment Management Council (NEMC), Tanzania Bureau of Standards (TBS) and the Government Chemist, with each of these coming with their own fees.

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All these make air transport, in general, unnecessarily expensive and low-cost air transport, specifically, practically impossible.