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Uganda Airlines launching flights to London Gatwick

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Uganda Airlines has announced the launch of flights to the UK.

Services between Entebbe and London Gatwick will start on 18th May.

There will be four flights per week, departing on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays.

Flight times vary and there are both day and overnight flights outbound from London.

The return flights from Entebbe are equally varied – you might want to avoid the 3.10am departure on Fridays, and the midnight departures on Tuesday and Wednesday don’t look great either. The return on Sunday is a day flight leaving Entebbe at 9.25am.

Gatwick is the first European route for Uganda Airlines, and this will be the first direct flight between the two countries on any carrier for a decade.

Uganda Airlines is not in any airline alliance so there is no opportunity to earn or redeem miles.

It will fly a rarely seen A330-800

Aircraft enthusiasts will be intrigued to know that the service will be operated by the lesser-spotted  Airbus A330-800 version of the A330neo. This is the smaller but longer range sister of the A330-900 operated by Virgin Atlantic amongst others.

Airbus has delivered a grand total of seven Airbus A330-800 aircraft – Kuwait Airways has four, Uganda Airlines has two and Air Greenland has one. Most airlines have preferred the additional seating capacity of the -900, seeing little benefit in trading off rows of seats for an additional 1,000 miles of range.


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Comments (12)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Throwawayname says:

    Midnight departure doesn’t seem that bad if flying in business class- presumably the flight lasts 8 hours or so and the time difference is pretty small, so passengers should be sufficiently sleepy to get a meaningful amount of rest onboard and arrive in decent condition for the day ahead.

  • Danny says:

    Should send Rhys!

  • RC says:

    Well done Uganda.
    Fills another gap BA vacated to add yet more flights to US fly-over states. Perhaps they can go to Lusaka too?

    Impressive they’ve pulled this together faster than BA can negotiate an Amex tier point deal.

  • Stuart says:

    Never expected HfP to write this article. No BA, no Avios, no oneWorld! With the BAEC to BAC changes are we to get more ‘surprise’ articles?

    • Rob says:

      It wasn’t emailed though. We often slot in niche 4th articles if there is an interesting angle.

  • ADS says:

    whilst it’s always good to get a new route … there aren’t many new connections available through EBB that aren’t already available via other 1 stop options

    with just 4 CRJs and 1 A320 – Uganda Airlines don’t have a big short haul operation

    https://www.airfleets.net/flottecie/Uganda%20Airlines.htm

    • Throwawayname says:

      They do fly to South Africa, though, and the business class fares are a lot more realistic than what BA/VS charge ex-UK. I’m not quite the biggest fan of S. Africa, but I know it’s a very popular destination and I can also see myself returning in order to fly through it on the way to Mozambique, Namibia etc and maybe spend the odd day stopping over in CPT or Pretoria.

      • RC says:

        Maybe best to check out who Uganda welcomes. And who it doesn’t before booking to CPT. Much of the rainbow city would be jailed in Entebbe.

  • Robert says:

    But who will be frying the plane?

  • William says:

    The author of the article must be a bit confused. The flights originate from Entebbe. The flights from Gatwick are the return flights, not the flights from Entebbe.

    • Rob says:

      Fog in Channel; Continent Cut Off

    • jjoohhnn says:

      To an airline, flights are just flights. Where you originate depicts what is your outbound and return flight, so the author’s standpoint is correct. Ryanair for example fly point to point, the same aircraft may fly Oslo -> Gdansk -> Stansted -> Gdansk -> Krakow -> Porto -> Krakow -> Birgmingham

      The outbound and return is only in relation to you, not the plane.

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

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