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Uganda Air Transport
In the late 1980s, Uganda's major international airport
at
Entebbe was handling about 135,000 passengers annually, a
substantial increase over the early and mid-1980s. Six
scheduled
airlines flew into Entebbe, one of five airports with
paved
runways. The national airlines, Uganda Airlines, suffered
several
financial setbacks, however, operating a fleet of only
four
outmoded and unreliable aircraft. British authorities
banned the
B707 aircraft from operating in Britain because of noise
abatement restrictions. Uganda Airlines also reduced its
European
service to one flight per week to Italy and West Germany.
Uganda
then signed a lease agreement with Zambian Airways for a
weekly
flight to Britain. When this arrangement proved too
expensive, a
similar agreement was signed with Ghana Airways, which
began
operation of a DC10 flight between Entebbe and London in
April
1988.
The October 1988 crash of a Uganda Airlines Boeing
aircraft
in Rome seriously crippled the airline's operations. That
aircraft was the only one in the fleet fitted with a "hush
kit"
to reduce noise to European standards. Although Uganda
Airlines
resumed service with a leased aircraft in December 1988,
the
financial viability of that service remained questionable.
Uganda
Airlines continued to operate service to the Middle East
and
Nairobi in 1988, but these flights, too, were canceled in
late
1989. Domestic routes, too, had been reduced to those
between
Entebbe and the Arua and Kasese airfields. Uganda Airlines
was
exploring the possibility of merging with Air Tanzania and
Zambian Airways, as all three airlines sought to find ways
to
operate newer, larger aircraft economically but lacked the
passenger and freight traffic to do so.
The government contracted with a British consulting
firm,
Psiair, to conduct a management study of Uganda Airlines
Corporation. The 1989 Psiair report urged a complete
overhaul of
the airlines, citing fiscal and labor mismanagement and
safety
problems among the most serious concerns. By late 1989,
the
government was considering a policy that would require all
airlines personnel to resign and reapply for their jobs,
in an
effort to remove "ghost employees" from the payroll and
reduce
nepotism among airlines management.
Data as of December 1990
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