Air Seychelles: What the airline is doing with a second Airbus A320

At the end of April, with unusually little fanfare considering that the global travel media was at the Seychelles for the 2015 edition of the carnival, a second Airbus A320 joined the Air Seychelles fleet.

In December, the airline launched new destinations, Dar es Salaam with two flights a week and also Antananarivo and Mumbai, and all reached with their first such aircraft besides the already regular three flights a week from Mahe to Mauritius.

As reported here at the time and then again more recently, Air Seychelles was eyeing to increase the number of flights from Mahe to Mumbai, Mauritius and Antananarivo.

The added, fourth flight to Mumbai, is already on line now as is the fourth flight to Mauritius while a third flight will be added to the Madagassy capital on July 3.

The additional regional flights are not only aiming to bring more traffic into the Seychelles but to generate more transit traffic in Mahe to for instance Mumbai and from early July also to Paris, where the airline is finally resuming three weekly nonstop services.

It was also learned while on the islands last week, from sources outside Air Seychelles, that the airline has returned on of their two Airbus A330-200 to partner Etihad and discontinued their own flights to Hong Kong in favour of Etihad flying daily from Abu Dhabi through which the Hong Kong service operated. The livery of this particular Airbus A330-300 will however not change and will continue to carry the Seychelles’ colours into Hong Kong with one each Air Seychelles’s cabin staff in business and economy class.

This development comes hot on the heels of the Seychelles’ Minister for Foreign Affairs and Transport, Mr. Joel Morgan, who is also the Chairman of Air Seychelles, announcing at the opening press conference for the just ended 5th Carnival International de Victoria, that the government has granted landing rights for a Chinese airline to fly a series of non-scheduled nonstop flights from a yet to be disclosed departure airport in China to Mahe as a result of growing demand for seats between the two countries. Chinese arrivals have again grown in the first quarter of 2015 and nonstop flights will no doubt further boost visitor numbers to the archipelago from China.