The Acting Uganda Airlines acting Chief Executive Officer Jenifer Bamuturaki has confirmed that Airbus A330-800neo landed in Seattle on Friday afternoon. This was the first time a Uganda Airlines plane flew to the United States.

“It [flight] was by a client, it was hired. We do charters, by the way, that is an angle the airline has, and we have been doing them since 2020. After lockdown, we started, actually, during lockdown we were doing charters.”

She adds, “No, we’re never at liberty to reveal who our clients are even on the passenger flight. Even if you called me and asked me, do you have a client who traveled on such and such a day? I’m not supposed to tell you that but we did operate, it was a charter. We operated to Seattle.”

The Airbus with the registration code 5X-NIL on Thursday flew from Entebbe (EBB) to Keflavik (KEF) in a flight time of 10hr42min and on Friday flew from Keflavik (KEF) to Seattle (SEA) in a flight time of 7hr28min. It would appear that the plane refueled in Iceland, as it was only on the ground for a few hours.

Uganda Airlines operates a young fleet of two Airbus A330-800neos plus four Bombardier CRJ-900ERs. The A330-800neo is an incredibly rare jet, as very few airlines ordered it (the A330-900neo has proven much more popular).

Currently, Uganda Airlines’ only A330-800neo destination is Dubai, and the airline eventually plans to fly to London as well. However, over the past couple of days, one of Uganda Airlines’ A330s operated quite a journey.

The state-owned carrier currently serves 10 regional cross-border routes including Bujumbura in Burundi; Dar es Salaam, Kilimanjaro, and Zanzibar in Tanzania; Johannesburg O.R. Tambo in South Africa; Kinshasa N’Djili in the DRC, Mogadishu in Somalia; and Mombasa and Nairobi Jomo Kenyatta in Kenya.