Tanzania ramps up retaliatory bans on Kenyan airlines

The Tanzania Civil Aviation Authority (TCAA) has extended its ban on Kenyan airlines to include Fly540 (5H, Nairobi Jomo Kenyatta), Safarilink Aviation (F2, Nairobi Wilson), and Airkenya (P2, Nairobi Wilson) as the row over COVID-19-related entry policies escalates, Tanzanian daily The Citizen has reported. TCAA Director General Hamza Johari confirmed that the ban would not be lifted until Kenya adds Tanzania to its list of countries whose citizens are exempted from quarantine on arrival in Kenya. The Tanzanians have perceived the inclusion of their country on the mandatory quarantine list as unfair given that more than 100 countries have already been removed from it. Authorities in Dodoma banned Kenya Airways (KQ, Nairobi Jomo Kenyatta) from operating to Tanzania on August 1 and remains so despite diplomatic and business overtures. While Kenya Airways flew mostly from Nairobi Jomo Kenyatta to Dar es Salaam, in addition to less frequent services to Kilimanjaro and Zanzibar, the newly banned airlines focus on the latter markets. According to the ch-aviation schedules module, Fly540 operated daily from Mombasa to Zanzibar using a Dash 8-100, Airkenya – daily from Nairobi Wilson to Kilimanjaro using DHC-6-300s, and Safarilink – daily from Nairobi Wilson to both Zanzibar and Kilimanjaro. No other Kenyan airlines operate scheduled flights to Tanzania at this moment. Services between the two countries run by Tanzanian carriers, as well as by Uganda Airlines (UR, Entebbe/Kampala), remain suspended.