fastjet’s first flight from Dar es Salaam to Mbeya in south west Tanzania departed on schedule this morning. Mbeya is the fifth Tanzanian destination in the fastjet network, which already includes Dar es Salaam, Mwanza, Kilimanjaro and Zanzibar.

This new route enables fastjet to provide affordable fares to the people of Mbeya, a city located close to Tanzania’s borders with Zambia and Malawi. The recently opened Songwe Airport, 10km outside Mbeya, has now been upgraded to accommodate jet aircraft, enabling fastjet to commence services to and from this important, densely populated region. Bookings on the new route are extremely strong with passenger loads of over 90% on the first day’s flights.

Following the recent launch of fastjet’s Dar es Salaam to Johannesburg service, today’s flight marks another significant milestone in the expansion of the fastjet network. fastjet now offers over 45,000 seats on more than 300 flights per month and expects to add Lusaka in Zambia to its network in the near future.

Ed Winter, fastjet’s CEO, said: “I am really pleased with the continuing momentum in the development of our network. Network scale is important in terms of offering more choice to our customers and also in terms of covering overhead costs and moving our Tanzanian operations towards profitability. As we approach the one year anniversary of the first fastjet flight, the Board is delighted with the strong operational progress we are now making both in Tanzania and elsewhere in southern Africa.”