Air Tanzania

Is Air Tanzania safe?

On the evidence, mostly yes, with one large caveat. Air Tanzania has had no fatal accident since a training crash in 1984, and since 2016 it has rebuilt itself with aircraft bought new: 787s, A220s, 737 MAX 9s and Dash 8-400s. It is an IATA member, so it has passed the IOSAIOSAThe IATA Operational Safety Audit, an international audit of an airline's safety management and operations. Every IATA member must pass it.More in the glossary audit. The caveat is the regulator. The EU banned Air Tanzania in December 2024 and then every airline certified in Tanzania in June 2025, because it judged that Tanzania's authority could not oversee them properly. We score it 64.

Why the EU ban matters more than usual

Tanzania's ban came in two steps. First, in December 2024, the European Commission listed Air Tanzania alone, on the basis of safety concerns found by EASA, which also refused it the third-country operator permit it needs to fly to Europe. The airline had no European routes at the time.

Then, on 3 June 2025, after a meeting of member-state experts in May, the Commission banned every Tanzanian-certified airline. Its stated reasons were a shortage of qualified staff at the authority and ineffective oversight of flight operations and airworthiness. The separate listing of Air Tanzania was folded into that country entry. The June 2026 list still bans all Tanzanian carriers and names Air Tanzania's certificate, TCAA/AOC/001, among them.

This does not mean Air Tanzania's aircraft are badly maintained. It does mean that nobody outside the airline is checking it to the standard the EU expects, and that is what our oversight factor measures. We score oversight at 25, the same as the airlines of Nepal, which are also banned as a whole; Russian airlines, banned too, get 20. The IOSA registrationIOSAThe IATA Operational Safety Audit, an international audit of an airline's safety management and operations. Every IATA member must pass it.More in the glossary is real and counts for something, but it is an audit every two years, not a regulator. Tanzania is also missing from the FAA's safety assessment list, because no Tanzanian airline flies to the United States.

The accident record

Air Tanzania's last fatal accident was on 20 December 1984, when a Twin Otter on an instrument training flight out of Dar es Salaam spun and crashed, killing its three crew. Inside our 20-year window there are two hull lossesHull lossAn accident in which an aircraft is destroyed or damaged beyond economic repair. People may or may not be hurt.More in the glossary, both without deaths and both from the years before the relaunch:

• Mwanza, 1 March 2010. A 23-year-old Boeing 737-200 from Dar es Salaam landed in a crosswind and, the captain said, hit standing water; it slid off the left side and ran 305 metres across grass. All 46 people on board got out.
• Kigoma, 9 April 2012. A Dash 8-300 overran the runwayRunway excursionWhen an aircraft leaves the runway surface during take-off or landing, either off the end (an overrun) or off the side (a veer-off).More in the glossary on take-off. A wheel hit a muddy pothole, the right wing broke away inboard of the engine, and the engine was pushed into the cabin by an emergency exit. All 39 on board survived.

At that time Air Tanzania flew only a handful of aircraft, so two write-offs in three years is a high rate. With no fatal accident in 15 years the accident record sits in our 80–94 band, and those losses keep it at the floor, 80. There has been no hull loss since the 2016 relaunch.

A young fleet with engine trouble

The fleet is the airline's strong point. In March 2024 it had two Boeing 787-8s, four Airbus A220-300s, two 737 MAX 9s, five Dash 8-400s and a 767-300 freighter, all bought between 2016 and 2024, according to The Chanzo. Only an old Dash 8-300, built in 1997, has sat under repair since 2020.

The A220s have been the problem. Their Pratt & Whitney engines need shop visits far sooner than planned, and by November 2022 at least three of the four were out of service (The EastAfrican). On 24 February 2024 an A220 bound for Mbeya with 122 people on board returned to Dar es Salaam with an engine fault and smoke in the cabin; the airline said the smoke cleared within five minutes. Another A220 shut down an engine near Mwanza in 2019. Grounded aircraft mean cancellations, not lower standards, and we do not score them as a fleet weakness.

Thin incident records

Public incident data on Air Tanzania is sparse: AeroInside lists three events in 14 years. That is not a sign of a clean airline. The EU's main criticism was that Tanzania's oversight of flight operations does not work, and the Tanzanian investigators publish few reports. The 2022 Bukoba crash of Precision Air, a different airline, also exposed slow rescue services. We score incidents at 58 rather than reward an empty record.

How to fly Air Tanzania more safely

• Prefer the jet routes where you can. The 787s, A220s and MAX 9s fly the main domestic and regional routes; smaller lake and western airports have weaker runways and approach aids.
• Plan for weather around Lake Victoria. Thunderstorms build fast near Bukoba and Mwanza. A diversion back to Mwanza or Dar es Salaam is the safe choice, so leave time in your plans.
• Check the operator on safari connections. Many Serengeti and Zanzibar flights are run by small Tanzanian airlines under the same EU ban, with smaller aircraft and shorter strips than Air Tanzania.

How we scored it

The fleet (86) and the accident record (80) are solid. Oversight (25) is the weakest factor, set by the EU's ban on all Tanzanian airlines, and the thin incident record (58) and harder domestic airports (55) pull the score down further. Compare Kenya Airways at 75 and RwandAir at 76.