Sierra Leone to Acquire own Aircraft
Sierra Leone is aiming to become the latest African country with its own airline. If all goes according to schedule, Air Sierra Leone will begin flights on December 2.
Speaking at a press conference in November, Air Sierra Leone CEO Emmanuel Iza said initial plans are to serve regional destinations including Abidjan, Accra, Monrovia, Banjul, Dakar and Conakry, with the ambition of making Freetown International Airport a regional hub.
The second phase of operations will be to feed passengers from those regional destinations into Freetown to connect with a long-haul route to London Gatwick. Flights to London are scheduled to be operated three times a week.
A third phase, according to Iza, will see flights to the US. Iza said that he had initially looked at US services starting within six to 10 months of the airline becoming operational, but “I think we may need to fast-track that process.”
To serve the routes, Air Sierra Leone will have an initial fleet of two aircraft; a 50-seat Embraer 145 regional jet, leased from Nigeria’s XE Jet, which will service nearby regional capitals; two more Embraer 145s are planned to be provided from the Nigeran carrier’s fleet. The longer-haul, six-hour London route will be undertaken by a 189-seat Boeing 737 MAX 8.
Iza is also CEO of XE Jet, which is supplying technical support for the new airline as well as its Embraer 145s.
Flights from Freetown to the US would require an aircraft with longer range than the 737 MAX 8 and no indication has yet been given as to what type might be used.
At present, the UK and the European Union (EU) ban all Sierra Leonean-registered aircraft from entering their airspace under the EU’s Air Safety List, due to previously poor regulatory oversight by Sierra Leone’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).
However, this problem is being overcome by Air Sierra Leone operating an aircraft from the UK’s Ascend Airways, an ACMI (Aircraft, Crew, Maintenance and Insurance) specialist that provides a turn-key service for other airlines requiring aircraft capacity. Ascend will operate the London flights on a charter basis on behalf of Air Sierra Leone.
Following its 2008 blacklisting, Sierra Leone’s CAA has recently opened up its flight registration system and is now offering an airline operating certificate (AOC), the stringent final regulatory hurdle that a prospective airline has to pass before being able to start commercial flights.
Sierra Leone was placed on the blacklist in 2008 for a lack of regulatory oversight of aircraft operating on the Sierra Leone register, namely issuing AOCs without meeting the necessary international safety and oversight requirements.
In April 2024 new Sierra Leone CAA director-general Musayeroh Barrie led a delegation to Brussels to meet the chairman of the European Union’s air safety committee, Peter Bombay.
The CAA reported that Bombay had been impressed by the organization’s commitment to build capacity among key technical staff, but said that more work needed to be done in this area, especially in the area of flight safety standards, and encouraged Sierra Leone to prioritize those areas with the assistance of the Italian CAA, ENAC.
After the necessary standards have been reached, Sierra Leone will invite the EU Commission to review the organization; if the commission is satisfied it will then remove Sierra Leone from the blacklist.
The Brussels visit resulted in the development of a road map with the Commission. A key milestone will be developing the SL CAA’s abilities to process AOCs in the internationally-approved manner.
Under this roadmap, Sierra Leone will, in the next few months, strengthen the capacity of its key technical staff.
