If you’ve just begun planning your African adventure and are searching through Skyscanner or Google flights you may have stumbled across an airline called ASky? They aren’t really a big household name if you not from central or western Africa, so how are they as an airline? And what is it like to fly with them?
Airlines in Africa
Firstly, something important to note about air travel in Africa is that many countries are too small in either size, population or both to sustain a national carrier. This makes flight options quite limited across the continent. It also means that for very short flights prices can be very expensive! This is also due to the lack of demand for many of these routes, this however is slowly changing as a bigger middle class emerges on the continent.
Currently many airlines in Africa will operate out of a hub and do many technical stops on their route. For example, with ASKY to fly from their hub in Lomé, Togo to N’Djamena, Chad you will have a technical stop in Douala, Cameroon. These technical stops are usually quite quick and you do not have to exit the plane for most of them. They will announce them on the plane similar to a bus as it feels quite casual. These routes will sometimes do up to 3 little stops before making it back to homebase.
Many of the airports where the planes touch down are quite small and have very little space to wait around in so often being stuck on the plane is better, especially if they keep their air-conditioning running.
What is ASKY like?
Personally, we find it fine. The service was decent, they were timely enough (especially in a region where delays are very common) and they served food and drinks on board for no extra charge. For the price you are paying you may expect more, but with such limited options in the region, you really must take what you can get. Sometimes the only other options would be to fly back to a European hub and then fly back down. Personally, I don’t like the idea of flying for 16 hours just to go to a city that should be a 2-hour (maximum!) flight.
The food on the flight is not the greatest but will be enough to tide you over until you
What is Lomé airport like?
If you are transiting through Lomé, you will have to get off the plane and wait inside. The airport leaves a lot to the imagination and is very basic. The air-conditioning works ok and there are plenty of clean toilets. Getting snacks and water is fairly limited for options and you will have to have cash available to you in either XOF, USD or EUR. A bottle of water in the airport will set you back 1000 XOF (West African Francs) so just under $2 USD.
The airport waiting area is a just a big chaotic hall with lots of seating. We were there when it was quite busy, and we were still able to find a seat. There are also some charging areas for phones, but don’t count on them being available as competition was fierce.
What other airlines are in the region?
Some other options when booking regional flights are Afrijet (homebase Libreville, Gabon), Air Côte D’Ivoire (home base in Abidjan, Côte D’Ivoire), Air Peace (homebase Lagos), and Air Senegal (homebase Dakar). There is also talk of Guinea (Conakry) expending their national carrier, but we will have to wait and see about that.
How to pay for these flights?
ASKY tickets can be bought online through their website, and they accept both Visa and Mastercard. The website can sometimes have issues though and you may need to try it multiple times. Otherwise, there are also 3 rd party sites such as Kiwi and Trip.com that have the flights available.
If you’re interested in coming with us to either
Cameroon or Equatorial Guinea
, then you will probably find yourself taking oner of these above mentioned airlines. If you’ve booked a tour with us and are looking for flight options let us know and we might be able to point you in the right direction.
To join us on tour in Africa send us an email to
[email protected]
.
