About four years behind schedule, and eight years after Kenya Airways placed an order, the airline is getting ready for delivery of its first Boeing 787 Dreamliner. KQ now has a teaser Dreamliner video on YouTube, and this image of their first aircraft on Facebook.
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| KQ 787 at Everett, Washington |
From the All Things 787 blog, at least three KQ Dreamliners are in the production stages with ZA655, a Boeing 787-800, with GE GEnx-1B engines, undergoing final assembly at Everett, Washington
Two Dreamliners were expected in 2010 and four in 2011, but after production delays at Boeing, KQ is now expected to take delivery of the first 787 around April 2014.
Boeing did bring a 787 to Nairobi in 2011 during the Dreamliner World Tour, and Ethiopian Airlines who are the only African airline that currently flies the aircraft, seem to bring one to Nairobi each week.
EDIT: At #Mindspeak chat session on January 25, KQ CEO Titus Naikuni explained the delivery schedule of Boeing 787s to Kenya Airways as:
1. April (1st week) 2014
2. June
3. July
4. August
5. September
6. October
So KQ gets new 6 787’s in 2014, and another 3 in 2015, as they retire their Boeing 767 fleet and return all of them, but one, to their owners. They will also add a second Boeing 777-300 in June and another in August, and plan to refurbish their current fleet of 4 Boeing 777-200’s.