Air Tanzania has operated its first scheduled flight between Tanzania and Russia, marking the launch of the only direct regular air service currently linking the two countries.

The airline’s inaugural flight landed at Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport on Thursday, carrying 123 passengers, while 144 travelers were booked on the return service. 

According to the Russian Ministry of Transport, Tanzania’s national carrier will operate the Dar es Salaam–Moscow (Vnukovo)–Zanzibar route up to three times a week using Boeing 787 Dreamliners. Air Tanzania is currently the only airline offering scheduled passenger flights between Russia and Tanzania.

The Moscow–Zanzibar journey takes around 8.5 hours.

The new route became possible after intergovernmental consultations, with Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency (Rosaviatsiya) granting Air Tanzania permission to operate flights to the country, Deputy Transport Minister Vladimir Poteshkin said.

“This will open up a new direction for travel for citizens of our countries and will generally expand the tourism potential of the industry,” he noted.

Passengers welcomed the launch, with one traveler telling RT they had been “waiting for a long time” for a direct connection between the two countries. “Not only Tanzanian people will benefit from this, but also other countries, extended parts of Africa,” the passenger said.

The resumption of direct air links could increase the number of Russian tourists visiting Tanzania by at least 30%, the Association of Tour Operators of Russia (ATOR) told TASS.

The flights restore a direct air link between the two countries for the first time since April 2021, when services were suspended due to the Covid-19 pandemic, though these had been mostly tourist charter flights. Moscow and Dar es Salaam agreed to resume direct flights in April 2026, and Air Tanzania received approval from Rosaviatsiya the following month to operate the route. 

The launch comes weeks after Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan’s official visit to Russia, during which she held talks with President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. The trip marked the first visit by a Tanzanian head of state to Russia in more than half a century, following founding President Julius Nyerere’s visit to the Soviet Union in 1969.