The national carrier RwandAir, on Wednesday, August 27, announced that it had acquired two Boeing 737-800 aircraft, one of which is already in operation. In a statement sent to The New Times on Wednesday afternoon, the airline added that newly serviced aircraft are returning to operations. A third one is expected in quarter four of this year ALSO READ: Inside plans to double RwandAir passengers The two Boeing 737-800s are configured with 12 Business Class seats and 162 Economy Class seats – each – will primarily operate on short and medium-haul flights. Later this year – in Q4, RwandAir anticipates the delivery of a wide-body Airbus A330-200, further enabling the airline to enhance its long-haul operations between Africa and global destinations. ALSO READ: RwandAir named Africa’s best regional airline “RwandAir is pleased to have resolved the challenges to our schedules over the last weeks, and to welcome our aircraft back into operation, the airline's Chief Executive, Yvonne Makolo, was quoted as saying in the statement. We would like to sincerely apologise to all of our customers whose travel plans were disrupted during this period, and thank them for their patience while we worked on service disruptions. Together with the arrival of new aircraft, the strengthened fleet will enable RwandAir to improve reliability, strengthen our schedules, and deliver an even better travel experience to all our passengers.” RwandAir experienced several unexpected technical disruptions across parts of its fleet, which temporarily reduced the number of aircraft available for operations. This led to service adjustments that affected schedules, but these have now been fixed with the affected aircraft successfully returned to service, the airline said. The investment in both narrow-body and wide-body aircraft reflects RwandAir’s strategic focus on intra-Africa travel and its goal of connecting Africa to the world, it observed. Before acquiring the two Boeing planes, RwandAir had a fleet of 14 aircraft, including Boeing, Airbus and Bombardier brands. The new additions mean the airline’s fleet has expanded to at least 16 aircraft. The airline projects to increase its fleet to 21 aircraft and the number of passengers to more than 2.1 million by 2029, from slightly over one million reported in 2023.
