FastJet has just published their latest statistics, showing a yearly average loadfactor of 73 percent and a November loadfactor of 72 percent across the board.
The airline upped their schedule to daily flights to Mbeya effective 16th December, after only launching the route a few weeks ago with initially three flights a week. Punctuality was given with 98 percent of all flights leaving on time, which in airline language means within 15 minutes of the published STD and STA (scheduled time of departure and arrival).
The airline also expressed their confidence that December may in fact be their best month ever, since they commenced flight operations on 29th November last year, as Richard Bodin, COO of FastJet said in a release sent to this correspondent: ‘We are delighted so far with our sales for the important Christmas period. Whilst it’s still early days, indications are that December bookings and revenues will be strong. We have already seen flights filling up quickly and we are recording historically high yields. We are also seeing increases in ancillary revenue sales.Additionally, our anniversary sales event last month proved successful. Focusing on selling seats in the traditionally weak post-Christmas period, we recorded our best ever sales day, selling more seats in 24 hours than ever before whilst achieving a better than expected yield’.
FastJet also confirmed that they are on course for the launch of their second international route on 01st February next year, which will be Lusaka, where they will compete with Pro-Flight from Zambia which launched flights to Dar es Salaam only a few months ago. No confirmation could be obtained though as to the intended launch date of flights to Nairobi, or Entebbe for that matter, which has been on the drawing board of FastJet for some time now.
Watch this space for breaking and regular aviation news from across Eastern Africa.