ONE MONTH AND COUNTING
RwandAir’s first brand new B737-800, which is presently being assembled at the Boeing facility in the United States, is now just one month away from delivery in Kigali.
Equipped with the latest ‘Sky Interior’, developed by Boeing to make the aircraft look more ‘sassy’ on the inside, the aircraft a few days ago got the engines attached to the wings while dozens of engineers and specialists are installing equipment and outfits before the plane will then go into a final phase of flight testing. Once that is accomplished a ‘rolling out’ ceremony will take place during which the aircraft will be officially handed over to RwandAir and commence a series of transit flights before landing at the Kanombe International Airport the following day to all the fanfare and celebrations RwandAir can lay on.
The new generation B 737 is the first of two presently on order and will boost the fleet of one of Eastern and Central Africa’s fast growing airlines, and ‘number two’ should be taking off to ‘the Land of a Thousand Hills’ within weeks.
RwandAir presently flies two leased B737-500’s, two CRJ 200 jets purchased from Lufthansa, and a Bombardier Dash 8 which is used to fly the domestic routes and for instance to Bujumbura.
‘WB’ has introduced new routes over the past year and now serves Kinshasa, Brazzaville and Libreville in West Africa, Johannesburg in South Africa, Dubai via Mombasa and of course Nairobi, Entebbe, Kilimanjaro and Dar es Salaam.
Happy landings to the new ‘bird’ as the clock keeps ticking away to the big day.
