Rwanda’s national carrier, RwandAir, has officially resumed its scheduled flights to Dubai in The United Arab Emirates (UAE) starting today, January 20th, 2022. This comes after the country was recently removed from the UAE’s red list. The airline will now resume flying from Rwanda’s capital Kigali, Uganda, Cameroon, Ghana, Burundi, and Zambia to Dubai.
The airline’s flights to Dubai had been suspended on 27th December, 2021, after the UAE banned flights from various African countries following the emergence and vast spread of the Omicron COVID-19 variant on the continent. Since January 7th, RwandAir was only operating cargo flights from Kigali to Dubai on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays.
The airlines passenger flights originating from other countries however remain suspended until further notice, including Kenya. Earlier this week, the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority (KCAA) extended the suspension of all inbound and transit passenger flights from the United Arabs Emirates (UAE) by a further 7 days.
The move comes after Dubai filed to lift a similar ban on air travellers from Kenya. The ban however does not affect cargo flights that are normally flown by carriers such as Kenya Airways and Emirates from the UAE into Kenya. The directive comes as a blow to Kenya Airways, which had seen an increase in bookings on this route occasioned by the ongoing Dubai Expo 2020 exhibition.
The Kenyan national carrier, Kenya Airways, said it would refund passengers who had booked tickets for travel within the suspension period. The travellers will also be allowed to rebook their flights when flights resume.