ECAIR - Equatorial Congo Airlines (EQR, Brazzaville) has signed a joint-venture agreement with Belgian MRO specialist, Sabena Aerospace, in which the two have pledged to establish a European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA)-compliant aircraft maintenance and overhaul facility in Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of the Congo (ROC).
The venture, sa@ec (a contraction of sabenaaerospace@ecair), will be majority owned by Sabena Aerospace.
Under the terms of the agreement, an MRO hangar capable of handling B787s will be built at Brazzaville Maya Maya International Airport. A training centre catering to local Congolese students will also be established to not only develop a skilled labour force, but also to help build a safety-oriented culture in the ROC.
"One of our priorities is training and we are confident that this partnership between Equatorial Congo Airlines and Sabena Aerospace will play a key role in our moving to the next level," ECAir CEO Fatima Beyina-Moussa said during the signing ceremony in Paris last week.
The Congolese government has invested heavily in renewing the country's aviation infrastructure with over USD200 million having been poured into the rejuvenation of Maya Maya airport which it hopes to develop into a regional Central African passenger and freight hub. To compliment this objective, state-owned ECAir has begun gradually expanding both its fleet and route network which should culminate in the arrival of its first B787-8 - HB-JJJ (msn 37306) - (to be operated by partner PrivatAir (Switzerland) (Geneva)) during the last quarter of this year.
To help circumvent the European Union's Banned Operators List, ECAir's inhouse fleet - which includes one B737-300, one B737-700, two B757-200s, one B767-300(ER) - is all wet-leased from PrivatAir. In addition, it wet-leases a Fokker 100 from Croatia's Trade Air (C3, Zagreb Franjo Tuđman).
With ECAir largely concerned with regional and international operations, fellow state-owned sibling SN Air Congo (Brazzaville) and codeshare partner Trans Air Congo - TAC (Q8, Pointe Noire) operate domestic flights.
