Precision Air: The Tanzanian Airline Tied to Kenya Airways and Its Zanzibar Routes

History and positioning

The airline is tied to one of the best-known air disasters of Tanzania's recent history: on 6 November 2022 a Precision Air ATR 42 ended up in the waters of Lake Victoria on approach to Bukoba airport, killing 19 of the 43 people on board, an episode that still marks the airline's history.

The fleet

The current fleet numbers about eight aircraft, a mix of ATR 42s, ATR 72s (including the most recent ATR 72-600) and Boeing 737-300s. In recent years the airline has had to deal with capacity problems, solved in part by wet-leasing an additional ATR 72-500 and returning to service a previously grounded ATR 42-600, a sign of a fleet that struggles to grow at the pace of demand.

Routes and network

The network is concentrated on a limited number of destinations, about seven, with Zanzibar as the most frequently served destination from Dar es Salaam, Arusha, Kilimanjaro, Seronera and Nairobi. Internationally, the agreement with Kenya Airways led to the introduction of a fifth daily frequency between Dar es Salaam and Nairobi, operated in part with Precision Air's Boeing 737-300s in codeshare with the Kenyan carrier.

Precision Air is practical for anyone who needs to reach Zanzibar or the cities of northern Tanzania, or Nairobi thanks to the agreement with Kenya Airways; anyone seeking a broad international network will instead find a network concentrated on very few destinations. Anyone booking a seasonal flight to Zanzibar in peak periods should consider that the small fleet leaves little margin in case of technical faults or unscheduled maintenance, with a higher risk of delay or cancellation than airlines with more spare aircraft.