AFRAA: TAAG to take first 787-9 in February 2025

Antonio dos Santos Domingos, TAAG Chairman told African Aerospace at the African Airlines 56th Annual General Assembly.

The airline placed an order for four 787s - two 787-9s and two 787-10s - at the Dubai Air Show in October 2023 with deliveries expected from August 2024. They will supplement and partly replace TAAG’s existing fleet of eight 777-200s and -300s.

The second 787-9 is expected in May, with the delivery dates of the 787-10s still to be confirmed.

While the delivery timeline of the first 787s has slipped, dos Santos Domingos is looing forward to their introduction to enhance the state-owned carrier’s offering on its busiest international services from capital Luanda to Lisbon and Sao Paulo.

The arrival of TAAG’s first General Electric GEnx powered 787s comes hard on the heels of a modernisation of its regional aircraft fleet with the airline putting its first Airbus A220-300 into service in November on high-demand domestic routes and intra-Africa connections.

In total TAAG’s strategic plan calls for the introduction of 15 A220s and the carrier is in negotiations with lessors for further A220s. The first A220 was leased from Air Lease Corporation with TAAG committing to take six of the type from ALC’s order-book in mid-2022.

The second and third A220s from ALC are scheduled to be delivered from Airbus in May and July 2025, said dos Santos Domingos.

As it adds new types to its fleet, TAAG began passenger operations from Luanda’s new Dr António Agostinho Neto International Airport on November 10.

TAAG has begun operating its first service from the new $3 billion airport located some 40km to the east of the capital on the domestic Luanda-Cabinda route. The plan is for TAAG to gradually transfer its services from downtown Quatro de Fevereiro Airport over the coming months with the full transfer by the end of March 2025, said dos Santos Domingos.

He is hopeful that state-owned TAAG will handle 2.5 million passengers in 2024, up from 2.3 million last year. The target is for this figure to grow to 3 million passengers in 2025 as the market continues to support traffic growth and to 5 million passengers in 2027.

In terms of route development, TAAG is aiming for its first service to the US in the next couple of years connecting Luanda with Houston to service the oil and gas industry, explained dos Santos Domingos.

The Angolan government is working with the US FAA to obtain the necessary approvals for a US service. A realistic timeline for this service to begin is 2026 taking into account the approval process and aircraft deliveries, he added.

It was announced at the close of the AFRAA meeting that TAAG will host the association’s 57th Annual Assembly in Angola in autumn 2025.