Success flies PrecisionAir away from Arusha
By Valentine Marc Nkwame
After briefly venturing the South African route last year and giving it up, the
Arusha based airline, PrecisionAir, now eyes Rwanda, Burundi and the Comoros
islands, as the company flies into its new fiscal year, 2005-2006 in March, at
the same time intending to move their base from Arusha to Dar es Salaam. .
PrecisionAir=s chief executive and managing director, Alfonse Kioko said his
company was intending to acquire another aircraft from the French manufacturer,
Avions de Transport Regional (ATR) in June this year, because apparently, AThe
market outlook looks bright!@
According to Kioko, it is now time for PrecisionAir to address growth
opportunities by extending the current flight network to other potential areas
such as the southern regions of Mtwara, Lindi and Mbeya.
PrecisionAir will acquire additional capacity to go beyond borders and extend
services to as far as Burundi, Rwanda and the Comoros. During its maiden flight
to South Africa in April 2004, the airline also made a trip to the Comoros.
The current weekly scheduled flights for PrecisionAir is rather heavy,
recording, 74 flights with a total of 280 departures. Due to this, the company
is working on improving its back-up service base, to cater for unforseen flight
disruptions.
PrecisionAir boasts of over 90 percent of AOn time performance,@ by January 2005
as recorded from the average of 1240 flight departures. AOur quest is to record
100 percent!@ Kioko explained.
The fast growing, privately owned carrier has just recorded a 25 percent growth
as far as the number of passengers were concerned during its financial year,
2004-2005. A total of 221,486 people flew by the airline between April last year
and January this year.
PrecisionAir (PW) sold 49 percent of its company shares to the Kenyan National
carrier, Kenya Airways (KQ) in 2003 marking the beginning of what seemed to be a
promising Joint venture.
In fact the PrecisionAir=s Boeing 737-300 aircraft which flew to South Africa
last year, was leased from Kenya Airways, but has already been taken back. AWe
still sell the South Africa route though!@ Said Murtaza Versi, the Marketing
manager, explaining that the airline feeds passengers to other carriers such as;
Kenya Airways and South African Airways.
But PrecisionAir is just about to acquire its own Boeing machine, expected to
fly in sometimes next year and another Boeing aircraft is yet set to reinforce
the company fleet in two years time.
All children leave home when they grow up and PrecisionAir is no exception, the
company is in the process of shifting its headquarters from Arusha to Dar-es-salaam.
ABut we shall still maintain our Arusha operations under the same premises.@ The
director assured.
A brainchild of the local investor, Michael Shirima PrecisionAir with its
current fleet of Seven aircrafts, was founded in 1987, then serving as an
Agricultural aviation company spraying farms in Eastern and Central Africa.
However, strangely as it may seem, the drought which later affected the region,
is what actually drove the company into the greener passenger carrying pastures.
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