When veteran journalist Andrew Mwenda posted a video of weary passengers stranded at Entebbe International Airport, his words cut deeper than the images themselves.
“The tragedy happening at Uganda Airlines is far beyond even my 2019 doomsday predictions,” he wrote on X. “One plane is stuck in Lagos, another in London, passengers stranded.”
In Mwenda’s telling, the situation had become so dire that “even God cannot save this airline.”
It was a brutal assessment, amplified by his stature and timing, and it landed at a moment when Uganda Airlines could least afford another blow to public confidence.
Days earlier journalist Sudhir Byaruhanga had berated Uganda Airlines for “operating an airline line like a taxi, where flights are cancelled for days on without prior warning.
“Last week’s Wednesday flight to Zanzibar was cancelled and pushed to Thursday. Yesterday’s (Wednesday) flight from Zanzibar to Entebbe was delayed until midnight, only for passengers to reach the airport and again told the same flight was pushed to today, Thursday. Imagine someone travelling on a budget and having to foot extra bills because of these bogus delays” he wrote on X (formerly Twitter.)
In responding to Mwenda’s new complaint, Uganda Airlines remained restrained avoiding a situation that would escalate matters.
The airline acknowledged the disruption, apologised for the inconvenience, and confirmed that flight UR 111 was already en route from London’s Gatwick Airport to Entebbe International Airport.
Normal operations, the Airline said, were being restored. The statement was calm, professional, and almost clinical.
But the anger Mwenda tapped into had little to do with that single flight. It reflected a deeper unease about an airline whose ambitions appeared to be racing ahead of its operational, financial, and institutional resilience.
To understand why a single undated video provoked such a reaction, one has to trace Uganda Airlines’ story through the months leading up to that moment, and through the leadership of its chief executive, Jenifer Bamuturaki.
Bamuturaki is no outsider to aviation. She returned to Uganda Airlines in 2019 as Commercial Director after stints at the defunct Air Uganda and East African Airlines, later rising to CEO in 2022.
For many, her appointment raised expectations. Here was a seasoned sales and marketing professional, steeped in the industry, taking charge of a young national carrier still finding its footing.
But she was also stepping into one of the most unforgiving sectors of the global economy, where margins are thin, capital needs are immense, and mistakes are mercilessly exposed.
But, unwelcoming as it is, the airline started reporting massive losses, expanding or reducing slightly each financial year. Its finance position remained volatile, with no sign of breaking even in the near future – five years after establishment – as government had earlier indicated.
That would be forgiven, given the complexity and capital intensive nature of the industry.
However, by the start of 2025, Uganda Airlines looked more strained than before.
2025 opened with a cancellation of its Kinshasa flight due to unrest in DR Congo, a reminder that the airline operates in a volatile region where security disruptions are unavoidable.
Yet even this externally driven decision exposed an internal vulnerability: a tight fleet schedule with little slack. One cancellation could quickly ripple across the network, affecting downstream rotations and crew allocations.
Within weeks, those pressures became more visible to passengers. In February, Uganda Airlines issued another travel notice warning that some scheduled flights might experience delays due to “unforeseen operational challenges.”
By April, a near-identical notice followed. Apologies were offered, assurances given, and global call centre numbers prominently displayed.
Over time, however, the repetition of such notices subtly recalibrated passenger expectations. Delays were no longer exceptional; they were becoming part of the brand experience.
This erosion of confidence was unfolding even as the airline attempted to shore up operational resilience.
To jog your mind, in late 2024, Uganda Airlines had announced a short-term wet lease of an Airbus A320-200 from a Lithuanian operator, DAT, to cushion operations during the winter schedule.
The aircraft, complete with its own cockpit and cabin crew, was intended to support the CRJ and A330 fleet, maintain schedule integrity during maintenance cycles, and address capacity constraints on busy regional routes such as Johannesburg, Kinshasa, Nairobi, Lagos, and Abuja.
On paper, it was a sensible tactical move. In practice, it underscored a deeper truth: the airline was relying on stopgap solutions to manage structural fleet shortages.
All this was happening as Uganda Airlines prepared for its most symbolically charged expansion: the launch of direct flights to London’s Gatwick Airport.
For years, the route had been framed as the ultimate validation of the airline’s revival, a statement of national ambition and economic intent.
Speaking at the UK–Africa Summit in London in September 2024, chief executive officer Jenifer Bamuturaki had confidently outlined a vision of daily flights, expanded cargo capacity, and deeper trade links between Uganda and the UK.
When the inaugural flight finally took off in May 2025, the optics were powerful. Works and Transport Minister Katumba Wamala hailed the route as a bridge for tourism and investment.
Airbus executives praised the deployment of the fuel-efficient A330-800neo. Uganda Airlines presented itself as a confident, outward-looking carrier stepping onto the global stage.
Letters to My Younger Self: Gloria Sebikari — “Take the Risk. Say the Hard Thing. Rest When You Need To.”But the operational reality was unforgiving. With only a small number of long-haul aircraft, the airline had almost no margin for error. Any technical issue, crew disruption, or maintenance delay could strand passengers thousands of kilometres from home and reverberate across the entire network.
As the year progressed, those risks increasingly materialised. By September, Uganda Airlines was publicly acknowledging disruptions to its long-haul schedules operated by the A330-800neo.
In parallel, it issued a statement clarifying that media reports about alleged irregularities in its fleet acquisition process were speculative and premature, stressing that decisions remained under shareholder oversight through an inter-ministerial fleet team.
The clarification was defensive but revealing. It showed an airline keenly aware that questions about fleet strategy, governance, and procurement were no longer confined to industry insiders but had entered the public arena.
Around the same time, Uganda Airlines was announcing new partnerships and routes that, paradoxically, added both opportunity and pressure.
An interline agreement with Air India promised seamless connectivity from Entebbe to more than 25 destinations across India and onward to international hubs such as London Heathrow and Singapore.
Strategically, it was a smart move, extending the airline’s global footprint without adding aircraft.
But it also raised passenger expectations. A traveller booking a single ticket from Entebbe to Mumbai assumes reliability across the entire journey. Any disruption on the Ugandan leg risks undermining confidence not just in Uganda Airlines, but in the partnership itself.
As operational stress mounted, scrutiny from Parliament intensified.
The Public Accounts Committee on Commissions, Statutory Authorities and State Enterprises (COSASE) revealed that government had invested UGX 1.87 trillion in Uganda Airlines since its revival, while accumulated losses had reached UGX 1.02 trillion.
Yet Parliament stopped short of writing off the airline. COSASE argued that Uganda Airlines still had a unique strategic advantage as the national carrier, offering direct connections to key African destinations and the potential to position Entebbe as a regional hub.
The committee pointed to cargo as a particularly promising area. Despite limited fleet and logistical challenges, cargo revenues had grown by more than half in 2024, driven by Uganda’s expanding exports of fresh produce, fish, and manufactured goods.
This, COSASE argued, demonstrated that the airline’s core business model was not fundamentally flawed. What was missing was tighter financial discipline and stronger execution.
Those caveats were sharp. Parliament flagged weaknesses in contract management, including the awarding of General Sales Agent contracts without bank guarantees and the accumulation of contingent liabilities from court cases and baggage loss claims.
These risks, MPs warned, undermined investor confidence and exposed the airline to further financial strain.
That exposure soon crystallised in court. In October 2025, the Industrial Court ordered Uganda Airlines to pay more than UGX 455 million to former chief executive Cornwell Muleya, ruling that his dismissal had been unlawful.
The judgment found that the airline had violated both the Employment Act and its own Human Resource Manual by denying him a fair disciplinary hearing and unlawfully extending his suspension.
While Uganda Airlines has indicated it will appeal, the ruling reinforced parliamentary concerns that weak internal processes were translating into real financial and reputational costs.
Even beyond the courtroom, signs of institutional strain were surfacing in unexpected places.
A September investigative report by this publication revealed a bitter dispute between Uganda Airlines and one of its inflight suppliers, Wavah Water, after a sealed bottle served on board was allegedly found with a dead cockroach trapped inside its cap.
The internal correspondence described the incident as a serious food safety failure with potential regulatory and reputational consequences.
Although the supplier denied the allegations and insisted its production processes are hygienic, the episode underscored how even minor lapses in quality control can quickly become public flashpoints for an airline already under scrutiny.
When Jenifer Bamuturaki appeared before Parliament in early December, she rejected claims that persistent delays were the result of mismanagement.
Instead, she described what she called a “cocktail of factors,” including short-notice airport closures, regional NOTAMs, airspace restrictions, and cascading delays across Entebbe, Juba, Bujumbura, and Dar es Salaam.
Works and Transport Minister Katumba Wamala reinforced this explanation, telling MPs that Uganda Airlines was overstretched, managing close to 40% of Entebbe’s traffic with too few aircraft.
Parliament’s approval, in a supplementary request, of more than UGX 422 billion for additional 10 aircraft was framed as a corrective measure aimed at stabilising operations rather than unchecked expansion.
Yet the accumulation of events from the stranded passengers, the repeated travel notices, the wet-lease stopgaps, the parliamentary warnings, the court judgments, and even supplier disputes has shaped a more complex picture.
None of these incidents alone defines Uganda Airlines. Together, they suggest an institution operating at the edge of its tolerance, where ambition, political expectation, and operational reality are increasingly misaligned.
Bamuturaki has effectively created the impression that the country should provide her with more time, funding, and patience, with the argument that fleet expansion, tighter controls, and route maturation will eventually align ambition with performance. Whether that patience holds may define the airline’s future.
