Flydubai among 10 budget airlines changing Africa s skies
ATP- Arab tourism portal- Traveling across Africa s huge distances can be expensive. Not that long ago, getting from one city to another often meant a connection in Europe.
That’s finally changing. Low-cost airlines are taking off across the region, serving routes that cater to the continent’s growing middle class.
It hasn’t been easy for them.African nations signed an "open skies" agreement in 1988, similar to the one in Europe that cleared the way for successes like easyJet.
Most countries have yet to actually implement the agreement. But as the number of potential travelers grows, the new low-cost airlines are slowly convincing governments about the benefits of increased air travel.
"There are more than one billion people on the African continent, which is home to just 3% of the world’s aviation business," says Ed Winter, CEO of Tanzania-based Fastjet.
"It is clear that the continent remains in desperate need of improved and affordable aviation connectivity."There’s a long list of failed ventures – Velvet Sky and 1time in South Africa both went bust in 2012.
Fly540 scrapped its flights to Accra and Luanda last year. But that’s not deterring new operators. There are 10 airlines already pushing Africa’s travel revolution, and Flydubai is one of them.
Although clearly not based in Africa, the airline connects 12 cities on the continent, if passengers don’t mind a layover in Dubai.
Flydubai added six cities in 2014, and this year was inaugurating a new flight to Hargeisa in Somali land.Flydubai serves Addis Ababa, Alexandria, Bujumbura, Dar Es Salaam, Djibouti, Entebbe, Juba, Khartoum, Kigali, Kilimanjaro, Port Sudan, and Zanzibar
