fastjet, which commenced commercial flight operations one week ago in Tanzania, has reported it carried 6,884 passengers, with an average load factor of 85.4 per cent on its first flights.

In addition, fastjet has sold 18,090 tickets to only two destinations with bookings now being taken as far out as March 2013.

All traffic to date has been on the initial Dar es Salaam to Mwanza and Kilimanjaro routes and as from tomorrow, fastjet will start adding additional flights to these two key launch destinations to service the demand for seats.

Commenting on the success of the first week of operations, fastjet chief executive Ed Winter said: “A great deal of hard work has gone in from the fastjet team, Tanzanian government, agents, contractors and suppliers to make this launch such a success. 

“We are looking forward to having all three initial Airbus A319’s fully operational over the coming weeks so that we can adequately cater for the expected holiday surge.”

Issue of Equity to raise £2.5 million

fastjet has outlined an aggressive growth strategy and has increased its working capital through a new successful fund raising with gross proceeds of £2,514,286 via a placing with an existing institutional investor and a draw down on its £5 million Equity Financing Facility with Darwin Strategic, a majority owned subsidiary of Henderson Global Investors Volantis Fund.

The company has received a legally binding contract from the existing institutional investor to raise £2,000,000 by way of the issue of 66,666,667 new ordinary shares at a placing price of 3p per share.

These shares will rank pari passu in all respects with existing ordinary shares of 1p each in fastjet. 

Once all the funds have been cleared, the placing will be completed and the company will make an announcement of the issue of the Placing Shares and their date of admission to AIM which is expected by December 11th 2012.