Guinea-Bissau Airlines is attempting to launch another flag carrier, according to Portugal’s Lusa news agency.
Aristides Ocante da Silva, the West African nation’s transport minister, announced on Wednesday the establishment of Guinea-Bissau Airlines – a company to be operated jointly with Canada’s Jitaa Aeronautics.
The new company succeeds an earlier one also named Guinea-Bissau Airlines and Guinea-Bissau Air Transport, later named Air Bissau, which operated until 1998, Lusa says.
The minister said that the fledgling airline’s network would initially connect the capital, Bissau, with the islands of the Bijagos archipelago and the south and east of the country, as well as operate flights to Cabo Verde, Ivory Coast, Gambia, Liberia, Senegal and Sierra Leone.
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In the future, he added, Guinea-Bissau Airlines hoped to start routes to Portugal, Brazil, and Italy, as well as take pilgrims to Islam’s holy cities of Mecca and Medina. (Guinea-Bissau is the only lusophone country where Islam is the chief religion.)
He also said he saw cargo opportunities, transporting seafood and agricultural products from Guinea-Bissau to the international market.
The vice president of the African subsidiary of Jitaa Aeronautics, Gaussu Sauané, told Lusa that he expects Guinea-Bissau Airlines to start operating “in the shortest possible time”.
