When news broke yesterday that Ethiopian Airlines has been granted traffic rights to carry passengers and cargo between Entebbe and South Sudan’s capital Juba, effective August 1, reactions came in swift and thick from members of the aviation fraternity as well as from travel agents in Kampala.

While travel agents expressed some relief over the restart of direct flights, sparing travelers the detours across the region to fly to Juba, some also voiced their sympathy with Air Uganda, which has made significant inroads in public opinion in recent days, now appearing as the victim of the UCAA [Uganda Civil Aviation Authority] and not the villain as the regulators were desperately trying to portray the airline to the public.

“After the serial failures of Ugandan airlines, from Africa One to East African to Victoria International, it took Air Uganda 7 years to get where they are and create market confidence again that a Ugandan airline can actually survive and carve out a market niche. Their fares were competitive, their punctuality good, their inflight service acceptable for the short flights into the region. Their grounding by the CAA immediately caused overbooked flights out of Entebbe, higher fares and a big loss of time because our clients had to fly via here and there but no longer direct. So on one side the news that Ethiopian was given traffic rights to Juba is positive but on the other it just confirms that there are forces at work out to destroy Air Uganda for their own reasons,” said one senior staff of a leading travel agency in Kampala.

Another raised an equally interesting question when she asked: “But why not give those traffic rights to an airline from the East African Community? First I condemn of course the CAA for what they are doing to our airline industry and no amount of words on radio or TV or in the newspapers can change that. These guys have no business to meddle into the sector by coming out to support the start of a national airline unless they have a vested interest. Do they have a vested interest? Who in particular among them has that vested interest and why? We had a national airline called Air Uganda before they started to destroy it. But that is the situation now and I am sure there will be a lot happening when people go to court. For now I just want to know why the Juba route was not offered to RwandAir or why Fastjet from Tanzania was not invited or Jambojet from Kenya or even Kenya Airways. They are East African Community member state airlines which would have been more suitable than giving the route to Ethiopian. RwandAir had applied for rights to extend one of their flights from Kigali via Entebbe to Juba, no? I remember you mentioning this last year. This is Uganda and it raises all the usual questions about who made the decision and why that decision was made, if you get my meaning. It is clear for me that the guys at the CAA have a hidden agenda against Air Uganda and I hope this is investigated.”

The aviation sector used the development to once again harshly criticize the Ugandan Civil Aviation Authority and in particular their attempts to put up smokescreens through TV appearances and using what one called “friendly journalists” to do their bidding. “Public opinion has started to turn against the CAA now. They feel the heat and are now lashing out with all sorts of things. In some cases it is a clear breach of confidentiality to wave letters around and everyone of course sees it for what it is, a feeble attempt to whitewash themselves. They have failed us and in any half way civilized environment we would expect resignations or people to get fired. We told you the other day about the bias and favours we spotted and are now sure that when you exposed this one of the two flying out of Entebbe was stopped. How could Air Traffic Control sanction flight plans under such circumstances remains a mystery. Now we are watching if someone else is allowed to defeat the international flight ban which applies to everyone else.”

The approval of traffic rights for Ethiopian, while bringing relief to the dozen of passengers who used to fly on Air Uganda’s double-daily services between Entebbe and Juba, is seen as a double-edged sword over the choice of airline made by the UCAA. “Choosing ET over KQ to operate such flights again shows bias. KQ is an EAC airline which should have been given priority to extend maybe one or two of their daily flights to Juba. These chaps at the CAA are so predictable in their likes and dislikes,” added another aviation source on condition of anonymity before also raising added questions about the restoration of routes to Dar es Salaam, to Mombasa, to Bujumbura, Kigali and Mogadishu, which were all served by Air Uganda until that ill-fated June 17.

What is clear is that aviation in Uganda is in a deep crisis and that the crisis has engulfed the regulators as much as the operators. Trying for weeks to hide behind their “authority” left that very “authority” in tatters and only when a determined campaign unfolded to put a different truth into the public domain did it dawn on them that they were after all not getting away with what they had unleashed on the industry. In fact in a complete departure from past practice, operators openly challenged them in the court of public opinion, undeterred by the potential backlash from those with now clearly bruised and dented egos.