RWANDAIR TESTS MARKET FOR US FLIGHTS THROUGH INITIAL CODE SHARE OPERATION
(Posted 07th June 2018)
Information is emerging from Kigali that RwandAir has been granted a provisional and conditional licence to fly to the United States. From usually well informed sources was it learned that the main conditionality will be flights carried out by either a US airline or another airline holding all necessary permits for flights into the United States.
While the process of directly attaining the various permits and licences is ongoing for RwandAir to eventually launch direct flights from Kigali into the US, will this take some more time – with the multi year struggle by Kenya and Kenya Airways a good example how long it can take to complete all audits, operational and security reviews of airline and home airport and tick all the relevant boxes the various US authorities require ticked.
The choice of partner airline or airport of origin are also yet to be announced but it is understood that negotiations are ongoing and, needless to say, will the choice of partner airline be an indicator about a potential future airline alliance membership.
Options exist for RwandAir to link their own Lagos flights to onward services by a US carrier, as are there options out of Brussels and London, two European destinations served by RwandAir.
To launch own flight services will also require at least one additional wide bodied aircraft to join the RwandAir fleet and while suggestions have been made through aviation blogs that the airline may step in to take up another A330 initially ordered by defunct Air Berlin has this not been confirmed by either Airbus or RwandAir.
