Uganda Airlines’ Airbus A330-800neo has returned to service after nearly three months of maintenance-related grounding.
The aircraft resumed flights to London Gatwick on Monday, May 4, having earlier been redeployed on the Dubai and Mumbai routes from April 17. The resumption follows months of unscheduled maintenance affecting both A330neos, largely attributed to issues with the Rolls-Royce Trent 7000 engines.
During this period, Uganda Airlines was forced to sub-charter (wet-lease) an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 787 to sustain its London operations. The short-term wet lease was intended to protect landing slots and ensure service continuity while the airline’s wide-body fleet remained unavailable.
Beyond maintaining passenger services, the arrangement was also necessary to retain valuable Gatwick slots, which operate under “use-it-or-lose-it” conditions.
It remains unclear whether the wet-lease of the Ethiopian-registered aircraft (ET-ASI) is ending, with the Boeing 787-8 expected to return to Ethiopian Airlines, as suggested by sources at Entebbe, or whether it will be retained temporarily to support operations until the second Airbus is restored.
Uganda Airlines’ fleet currently comprises two Airbus A330-800neos, one Airbus A320-200, and four Bombardier CRJ900s, in addition to two leased aircraft.
Last year, the wet-lease arrangement was extended until May 2026 to bolster capacity, particularly as the airline expanded into new destinations such as Kinshasa and Lagos.
Separately, the airline secured an Airbus A320-200 in late 2024 under a short-term wet-lease agreement with Danish charter operator DAT Lithuanian Airlines.
One of the A330neos had been grounded since January 11, 2026, while the second was withdrawn from service around February 19–20, leaving the airline’s long-haul fleet effectively out of operation by late February.
Indeed the proof of the pudding is in the eating. The direct experience this Uganda national and international company is going through needs to be appreciated. It is like going to the swimming pool with a friend who is always boasting that he knows very well how to swim the free style, the backstroke, the breaststroke, the butterfly etc… And when the friend jumps into the water filled pool he ends up drowning. This renown business of blatant national corruption of Uganda in every part of this long serving African government does not work in modern world wide airlines. Recently in Tik-tok, a journalist showed the African misery of running a modern domestic airline transportation system in the DRC where pets and all are loaded and tied with a rope on top of the aircraft frame!! Mind you that DRC nowadays is one of the rich members of the East African Community! One believes that if the DRC has better connections with the fast developing country of China, other than always kneeling to the USA for now 70 years and counting, this African country would be in possession of over 100 aircrafts with a reasonable airline on the continent of Africa. The immense territory the continent of African is made of, Uganda Airlines seems to have a long way to go in competitive air travel world wide.