> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.thecontrail.org/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Why Every Airline Suddenly Wants to Fly to This African Island - URL: https://www.thecontrail.org/zanzibar-new-flights-airlines-2026-2027/ - Published: 2026-09-19T23:00:11.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-19T23:00:10.000Z - Description: British Airways is returning to Tanzania after 15 years, and it's the fifth airline in about a year to add Zanzibar. Record visitor numbers explain why, and the airport is racing to keep up. - Author: Zach Benitez - Tags: News British Airways announced on Wednesday that it's going back to Tanzania for the first time since 2012\. Starting May 29, 2027, it'll fly from London Gatwick three times a week. Each rotation lands at Kilimanjaro first, continues to Zanzibar and flies home from there. The service runs through October 31, which lines up with UK school holidays and the peak safari season, and fares start at £849 round trip. For British travelers that's a useful piece of news, since reaching either airport has meant changing planes at somebody else's hub. Look at the last year of route announcements, though, and something bigger shows up. Airline after airline has been adding this one island. Route tracker ### Who Is Adding Zanzibar Jun 2026 **Airlink**Johannesburg Launched Jun–Sep 2026 **Etihad**Abu Dhabi Seasonal Sep 4, 2026 **EgyptAir**Cairo 2x weekly Oct 3, 2026 **Airlink**Cape Town, first nonstop Weekly May 29, 2027 **British Airways**London Gatwick via Kilimanjaro 3x weekly Jul 2027 **Air Tanzania**London Gatwick 3x weekly Visitors in 2025 917,167 Growth on 2024 Up nearly 25% Airport target 3m passengers a year Contrail --- ## Five Airlines in About a Year **EgyptAir** started flying Cairo to Zanzibar on September 4 this year, twice a week on Fridays and Sundays. It gave the islands their first direct link to North Africa without stopping in Nairobi, Addis Ababa or Dar es Salaam, and the first flight went out more than 90% full. **Airlink**, the South African carrier, launched Johannesburg to Zanzibar in June. On October 3 it adds the first nonstop between Cape Town and the island, flying every Saturday, so travelers in the Western Cape no longer have to backtrack through Johannesburg. **Etihad** brought back Abu Dhabi to Zanzibar this summer as a seasonal route, running from mid-June to early September. **Air Tanzania** plans to fly Gatwick to Kilimanjaro and Zanzibar from July 2027, three times a week. That would be the first nonstop service between the UK and Tanzania by any airline, and the carrier is buying eight aircraft over five years to make it work. Those join a list of existing services that already reads like a much larger airport. Arrivals on a single day this week included flights from Istanbul and Frankfurt. Rome, Dubai and Doha were on the board too, along with Nairobi and Addis Ababa. --- ## Why Now The visitor numbers explain most of it. Zanzibar welcomed a record 917,167 international visitors in 2025, which is up nearly 25% on the year before. Tourism boards everywhere claim growth like that. Very few actually post it. Airlines watch those figures closely, because a destination growing at that rate can usually fill seats without stealing passengers from anyone else. The island also sells two trips at once. Most visitors pair a few beach days with a safari on the mainland, which is exactly why British Airways built its route as a triangle through Kilimanjaro rather than flying straight to the coast. Politics helps too. Tanzanian officials have spent years pushing to diversify beyond the European charter market, and Zanzibar's government has been openly courting carriers from the Gulf and southern Africa. ![a hammock between two palm trees on a beach](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1646668072507-b2215b873c70?crop=entropy&cs=tinysrgb&fit=max&fm=jpg&ixid=M3wxMTc3M3wwfDF8c2VhcmNofDN8fHphbnppYmFyfGVufDB8fHx8MTc4OTg1NjcxMHww&ixlib=rb-4.1.0&q=80&w=2000) Photo by Danai Tsoutreli / Unsplash --- ## The Airport Is the Bottleneck All of this lands at one airport with one runway, and it's being rebuilt while the flights keep arriving. Terminal 3 opened in 2020 and was designed for about 1.5 million passengers a year. A rebuilt Terminal 2 was 90% finished as of August and adds capacity for another 1.4 million. Officials say the airport will be able to handle up to three million passengers a year once the work is done, and they want it ready before Tanzania co-hosts the Africa Cup of Nations next year. Other pieces are further out. A much larger apron, which is the parking area where planes sit between flights, was only about a quarter built in August and isn't due until 2028\. A bridge linking the two terminals was a little over halfway done. That timing matters, because new routes arrive faster than concrete gets poured. Anyone flying in during peak season over the next two years should expect a busy terminal. --- ## What It Means If You're Going More competition usually means better fares, and the effect shows up first on connections rather than nonstops. Someone flying from the US now has more one-stop options through Doha and Dubai, Istanbul and Addis Ababa, and now Cairo as well. Those airlines have to price against each other. Two practical notes. British Airways opened sales this week for flights that are still 20 months away, and the cheapest seats on a new seasonal route tend to go early. And if you're combining a safari with the beach, look for itineraries that fly into Kilimanjaro and home from Zanzibar, since that's how the new schedules are built. The thing worth watching is whether the island can absorb what it's asked for. Roads, water and hotel capacity all have limits that a bigger terminal doesn't fix, and destinations that grow 25% in a year tend to find those limits quickly.