Kenya – Tanzania meetings again delayed

Different reasons were offered by different sources in Nairobi for the unexpected postponement of the bilateral talks between Kenya and Tanzania which were due to be held on Wednesday, April 29. There were some suggestions that the imminent visit of US former President Bill Clinton saw Kenya’s Cabinet Secretary for Foreign Affairs too busy to lead the delegation to Tanzania for the anticipated two-day meeting, while others suggested that it was the Kenya Civil Aviation again playing for time to postpone the inevitable just a few weeks longer, that being that they would finally be compelled to grant Fastjet landing rights for scheduled flights from Dar es Salaam to Nairobi.

It is soon coming to a year that Fastjet was designated as a Tanzanian airline under the existing BASA, short for Bilateral Air Services Agreement, but that the Kenyan aviation authorities invented reason after reason to keep the low-cost carrier out of the Kenyan skies. Equally, the same bureaucrazies, pun fully intended, have stalled the Fastjet application for an Air Services License which would allow them to set up an operation in Kenya.

This delaying tactic finally saw the Tanzanian aviation authorities snap when two months ago they curbed flights by Kenyan airlines by nearly two thirds in retaliation for the extraordinary and insulting delay. It was only during a meeting of the two heads of state during a visit to Namibia that they decided to pull back and revert to the status quo ante, with Tanzanian vehicles again allowed access to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport while Kenyan airlines were able to resume a full flying schedule. This, however, was subject to reaching a final negotiated solution to these two and more contentious issues and the two country’s delegations, including tourism and aviation officials, who were to meet at the end of April with the Foreign Ministers taking charge, where previously the Tourism Ministers and Transport Ministers had failed to reach a lasting consensus.

One source close to the Tanzanian CAA has already suggested that if this latest delay is found out to be a ploy to keep Fastjet out of the Kenyan skies for much longer, they will again react sharply and may, in addition to curbing frequencies and reverting to the maximum flights allowed under the existing BASA, add ramp checks to their tools of retaliation to force a solution.

Kenyan sources were surprisingly silent on the development and would not even engage in off-the-record speculation, saying that all will be answered in due course when a new date has been set to fit both countries’ delegations best. A source close to Fastjet in Tanzania expressed disappointment for the fresh delay but was confident that the TCAA would make good of their promise to have Fastjet fly to Nairobi, or else resume punitive measures until the situation was fully resolved. Watch this space for breaking and regular aviation news from across Eastern Africa.