By Spy Uganda
A Uganda Airlines Airbus A330-800neo landed in Seattle on Friday afternoon. This was the first time a Uganda Airlines plane flew to the United States, so that’s cool to see. I’m still not sure what the purpose of this flight, though I suspect we’ll be able to figure this out with a bit of patience.
Seattle is a city on Puget Sound in the Pacific Northwest in Washington. It’s home to a large tech industry, with Microsoft and Amazon headquartered in its metropolitan area.
The Airlines’ A330 with the registration code 5X-NIL on Thursday, February 3, 2022, 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 just refueled in Iceland, as it was only on the ground for a few hours.
Interestingly the flight was operated with the flight number UR2. Ordinarily Uganda Airlines’ flights operate with flight numbers in the UR4XX range, so that was different than usual.
Uganda Airlines is an interesting new airline, which 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.
