Air Seychelles said in a statement that services to Dar es Salaam will stop March 12 and guests scheduled to fly there after that date will be accommodated on other flights. The airline’s chief executive, Roy Kinnear, said that the “twice a week Dar es Salaam service did not deliver the expected inbound guest benefit to Seychelles, therefore, after careful consideration, the decision has been taken to reassign our assets elsewhere where they will bring increased benefits.”

As of March 19, however, Air Seychelles is adding a fourth non-stop weekly flight to Johannesburg and will operate on Saturdays. “This new service will reinforce the traffic flows between Seychelles and South Africa, one of the strongest source markets of tourism for the archipelago, with more than 13,000 arrivals last year, and a popular holiday and shopping destination for Seychellois,” says the chief executive Kinnear.

The fourth flight will be operated on Saturdays on an Airbus A320 aircraft and will increase weekly seat capacity by 19 per cent, Kinnear said.