UGANDA (eTN) – In breaking news, KLM in Kampala has just announced that they will move to daily flights on the Entebbe–Amsterdam route, effective April 5 of this year.
The news comes not long after British Airways announced the withdrawal of their flights to Dar es Salaam, a destination where KLM is also flying to daily via Kilimanjaro, while the Dutch national airlines is flying double daily, in conjunction with Kenya Airways under a partnership codeshare arrangement to Kenya’s capital city of Nairobi.
KLM will be the first European airline to thus fly daily to Entebbe, via Kigali, serving both the Ugandan and Rwandan capital city from Amsterdam, where their global network and the flights of in particular SkyTeam partner airlines connect now to East Africa like no other.
The announcement serves notice of intent to not just the Gulf giants Emirates – also flying daily to Entebbe – as does Qatar Airways but seems to be mainly aimed at the competitors of SkyTeam like OneWorld, represented by British Airways, and Star Alliance, represented by Brussels Airlines which from the summer schedule onwards will fly four times a week between Brussels and Entebbe, also via Kigali. Those two airlines will now be under intense pressure to raise their own bar and add flights or else risk to be left behind as more and more travelers prefer to travel with airlines offering daily flights and not restricting them to but a few a week.
Travel agents were largely taken by surprise when contacted as few were aware of the announcement but it is expected that the KLM sales team will hit the travel shops and corporate client offices in force in coming days to make the most hay out of being the first and only European carrier to come daily to Uganda.
