Flights from Nairobi to Zanzibar (NBO-ZNZ): Airlines, USD Fares

Flights Nairobi -> Zanzibar (NBO-ZNZ) — USD Fares, Airlines, Frequency

7 scheduled departures a week link Nairobi (NBO) in Kenya with Zanzibar (ZNZ) — roughly one a day — flown by 1 catalogued carrier at a scheduled block time near 1.5 hours. Our catalogue scores corridor demand 6/10 and files it as an intra-Africa + Gulf hub transit corridor.

Flight NBO -> ZNZ is operated by Kenya Airways (~7 flights per week, ~1.5h block time). This is an intra-Africa + Gulf hub transit corridor, with typical economy USD fares in the $500-1,500 band. Intra-Africa and Gulf-hub transit fares move week-to-week; 4-8 weeks is the typical sweet spot.

Great-circle distance Nairobi–Zanzibar is about 602 km, computed from the stored coordinates of NBO (-1.32, 36.93) and ZNZ (-6.22, 39.22). What the figure fixes is the sector profile — 602 km against a scheduled 1.5-hour block time — and the fuel-and-crew economics behind the fare floor. It does not fix a compensation amount. No fixed-tariff compensation scheme reaches NBO–ZNZ. EU261 and UK261 do band by distance, but they only cover flights departing an EU/EEA or UK airport — plus arrivals there on a bloc-licensed carrier — and neither endpoint here is one, whoever operates the flight. The Montreal Convention 1999 is what applies, and it pays provable loss, not a tariff.

Airlines on this route

1 carrier operates NBO–ZNZ: Kenya Airways (KQ), a full-service airline based in Kenya, a member of SkyTeam, with a 23 kg checked-baggage baseline in our table. Our route file puts the corridor at about 7 weekly departures with a scheduled block time near 1.5 hours.

Our carrier table records a diaspora / migrant-worker baggage uplift of +5 kg on Kenya Airways. Read that as a carrier promotion, not a universal entitlement: uplifts of this kind are normally tied to specific fare families and specific corridors, they are rarely honoured on a codeshare or interline segment issued by another airline, and the cheapest promotional fare buckets are the ones most often excluded. Confirm the allowance against your own booking class before you pack to it.

Kenya Airways bases its operation at Nairobi (NBO), which is where the corridor’s recovery capacity sits. A hub carrier at the disrupted end has spare aircraft, spare crew and a connecting bank to reflow you through; the same airline at its outstation end usually has one aircraft a day and no local engineering. If the schedule matters, the direction you fly changes your odds.

USD fares — NBO-ZNZ

$295 is the lowest one-way economy price the Travelpayouts feed returned for NBO–ZNZ on TC, for a 2026-12-29T07:40:00+03:00 departure. That is a single cached observation on this one corridor — not a low across the site’s fare cache, and not a live price — so read it as an observed floor for NBO–ZNZ on that date.

Typical economy fares on NBO-ZNZ sit in the $500-1,500 range. Live cached fares from Travelpayouts appear in the panel below; fare-month seasonality follows.

Across the 8 departure months our cache holds a one-way low for, the cheapest reading on NBO–ZNZ is $161 for a Feb 2027 departure and the dearest is $199 for Jul 2026 — a spread of $38 between the best and worst month in the same cache. Month-to-month movement of that size is normal on this corridor and is usually worth more than any single booking trick.

The $295 quote in our cache is a nonstop itinerary of 14 h 25 m, which is the cleanest case: one flight number, one bag tag, one carrier responsible end to end. It also means the price floor on NBO–ZNZ does not depend on a connection holding together, so a delay costs you time rather than a missed onward sector.

NBO–ZNZ fare history — 2026-W23 to 2026-W25

3 weekly readings between 2026-W23 and 2026-W25 put the cached NBO–ZNZ low between $304 and $319 — a $15 spread, 5% of the cheapest reading. The cheapest reading is also the most recent, 2026-W25. Each row is one weekly snapshot of the cheapest published quote, not an average of everything sold that week.

The cached low fell 5% between the first and last reading, from $319 to $304. Read it with the sample size in front of you: 3 observations over a ten-week window is a signal about this corridor’s volatility, not a forecast. What it does establish is a defensible floor — you now know $304 was achievable on NBO–ZNZ inside the window, so a quote well above $319 is worth a second search.

Carriers behind the readings: TC, with the $304 low attributed to TC. Where a row shows a dash the gate returned no carrier code with the quote, which usually means a multi-carrier or agency-issued itinerary. Do not read a carrier name here as that airline’s own published fare — it is the marketing carrier on the cheapest itinerary a gate had loaded that week.

Checked baggage and uplift on NBO–ZNZ — and what is not covered

23 kg is the checked-baggage baseline our carrier table records for the 1 airline on NBO–ZNZ, with a recorded diaspora uplift of up to +5 kg on Kenya Airways. Baselines are economy figures and fare-family dependent. The allowance printed on your issued ticket overrides any table, this one included.

The baseline is the headline, the fare family is the contract. On NBO–ZNZ the same carrier will sell you a fare beneath its own advertised allowance, and those stripped buckets are exactly the ones that set record-low cached prices. Whatever a table says — this one included — the allowance on your issued itinerary is the number that will be enforced at the counter.

Where our table records a migrant or diaspora uplift — +5 kg on Kenya Airways — three exclusions usually bite. The uplift attaches to nominated corridors rather than the whole network; it rarely survives onto a codeshare or interline segment operated and ticketed by a different airline; and the deepest-discount fare buckets are commonly carved out. None of that makes the uplift fictional, but it does mean it has to be confirmed against your booking class, in writing, before you pack to it.

Search live fares

7 weekly departures across 1 carrier mean a live NBO–ZNZ search returns several price points for the same day; our cached floor for the corridor is $295. Scheduled nonstop block time is 1.5 hours, so any result far above that is connecting whatever the screen says.

Search NBO -> ZNZ on Aviasales ->

A live NBO–ZNZ search is only comparable once three things are pinned: the cabin and passenger count, so totals are like for like; the elapsed time, which separates a genuine nonstop from a routing that merely costs the same; and the baggage the fare includes. Skip any of the three and you are comparing two different products.

If anything about your NBO–ZNZ trip can move, make it the dates. The gap between the cheapest and dearest departure month in our own fare log is routinely larger than any difference between one booking site and another. Fixed dates put you in competition with everyone else holding the same date, and the answer there is to book early rather than to keep looking.

About Zanzibar

3 catalogued corridors in this site’s data reach Zanzibar (ZNZ), Abeid Amani Karume International, ICAO HTZA, from 3 catalogued origins and 4 carriers in total. That count is this site’s coverage of Zanzibar, not the airport’s published schedule. Each of those corridors has its own guide with carriers, weekly frequency, scheduled block time and whatever the fare cache holds.

Zanzibar, Tanzania — destination on the intra-Africa + Gulf hub transit corridor. Destination currency: USD (we quote in USD throughout this guide).

Beyond NBO, our catalogue reaches Zanzibar from 2 other origins: Dar es Salaam (DAR) and Johannesburg (JNB). That matters when the NBO–ZNZ fare is unattractive: on a continent where positioning flights are cheap, flying out of a different gateway is a real option, and each of those corridors has its own guide, carriers and cached fare floor on this site.

On the ground Tanzania uses TZS, while every fare on this site is quoted in USD. That split is deliberate: USD is the only currency that makes a Lagos fare and a Nairobi fare comparable on one page, but it means the card you pay with will convert twice if your bank settles in a third currency. Airline sites often offer payment in TZS or in your home currency — the airline’s own rate is rarely the better of the two.

FAQ

Which airlines fly Nairobi to Zanzibar? Direct NBO-ZNZ flights are operated by Kenya Airways. Compare baggage baseline and alliance in the carrier table above.

How long is the NBO-ZNZ flight and how often does it run? Block time is about 1.5 hours. The NBO-ZNZ route runs roughly 7 flights per week across all carriers.

How much does a NBO-ZNZ flight cost and when is it cheapest? Typical economy fares sit in the $500-1,500 USD band. Intra-Africa and Gulf-hub transit fares move week-to-week; 4-8 weeks is the typical sweet spot.

What is the checked baggage allowance on NBO-ZNZ? It varies by carrier and fare class — see the baggage-baseline column in the carrier table above. Full-service carriers usually include 23-30 kg, while low-cost carriers sell it as an add-on. Confirm on the airline’s site before booking.

What currency is used in Zanzibar? Zanzibar uses USD. Fares in this guide are quoted in USD; budget on-the-ground spending in USD.

Related routes and reading

2 related pages follow, each chosen because it shares an endpoint, a carrier or an audience cluster with NBO–ZNZ — not because of a keyword match. The annotations say what each one adds, so the ones that do not apply to your trip can be skipped.

• Nairobi airport (NBO) — Jomo Kenyatta International, Kenya: 19 catalogued departure corridors and 6 arrival corridors.
• Zanzibar airport (ZNZ) — Abeid Amani Karume International, Tanzania: 0 catalogued departure corridors and 3 arrival corridors.

Nothing above was chosen by keyword. The link set is derived from the route, carrier and airport files — a shared endpoint, a shared operator, a shared country or the same audience cluster is what puts a page on this list. That is why a link can point at a city you have no interest in and still be the useful one: it shares the airline.

The corridor links are there to be used as alternatives, not as further reading. If the NBO–ZNZ fare or schedule does not work, a different African gateway to Zanzibar is often the better fix — positioning within the continent is cheap relative to the long-haul sector, and the fare gap between two origins to the same destination is regularly wider than the positioning ticket. The catch is that separately issued sectors carry no protection if the first one runs late.