fastjet hails "fantastic" first month

Low cost airline Fastjet (LON:FJET) today said it had made a fantastic start to its new pan-African operation with almost 30,000 passengers carried last month.

The newly launched airline started flights with Airbus 319s from Dar es Salaam in Tanzania at the end of November.

Since then, Fastjet has carried a total of 31,315 passengers with 29,547 in December at a load factor (passengers as a percentage of the number of available seats) of 78.9%.

Ed Winter, Fastjet’s chief executive said: "To have achieved a 78.9% load factor and carry almost 30,000 passengers is a fantastic result for the first month of Fastjet operations and clearly demonstrates the latent demand for low cost reliable air travel in Africa.

“Press concerns over infrastructure have proved unfounded with no scheduled Fastjet flights cancelled and 99.6% arriving within 15 minutes of schedule."

Fastjet has grown out of Lonrho’s Fly540 arm and will use its operating bases as the core of a pan-African no-frills carrier that eventually could have a fleet of 40 Airbus 319s.

Including the Fly540 operation total passenger numbers in December were 98,443, up from 60,423 a year earlier, with a load factor of 71.8%.

The twelve month running total was 697,297 passengers, up 54.4% on a year ago.