Kenya aviation news update – MAS introduces ‘vintage Dakota’

VINTAGE AIRCRAFT DELIVERED TO MOMBASA AIR SAFARI

Capt. Johnny Cleave, CEO and principal owner of Mombasa Air Safari, took delivery earlier in the week of a vintage DC 3 ‘Dakota’ aircraft at the Moi International Airport in Mombasa. The airline bought the plane outright albeit with assistance of a bank loan for the purpose.

The pre World War II aircraft, first flown in 1935 and over 16.000 of these planes were built and put into civilian and military service. MAS’ version is fully restored and avionically upgraded with state of the art equipment, and will be a magnet of attention as it will from now on conduct sightseeing flights as well as flights to the country’s national parks with tourists from the coast, eager to experience being in a vintage plane. The slightly ‘enlarged’ version of the plane will carry up to 32 passengers in ‘standard’ airline seats and also features two modern turboprop engines which will keep operating costs under control.

Registered as 5Y-WOW, the wow effect will undoubtedly help to market the plane and keep it busy in the air with good payloads.

Happy landings to the plane, the crews and all the future passengers on board.

Rwanda news update – More nominations for global awards for Rwanda

RWANDA’S ENVIRONMENTAL RECORD EARNS THEM TWO AWARD NOMINATIONS

Information was received overnight from Kigali that the country has been nominated for two major global awards in recognition of their environmental policies put in place.

The ‘World Future Council’ put Rwanda up for their award to have comprehensively banned the use of plastic bags in the country, which prohibits the use, sale, importation and production of the environmental menace at the risk of stiff fines and prison sentences.

The other award nomination came for a women’s group project dealing with the removal of water hyacinth from Lake Bugesera, where the invasive plant had covered fish breeding grounds and became a source of malaria carrying mosquitoes nesting in it. The group was nominated for the Energy Globe Award in the ‘water category’. Once removed from the water the hyacinth plants can be used as feed for goats but also be converted into fibres for basket weaving and other uses, or else to make ‘energy bricks’ for domestic use in lieu of charcoal.

Way to go Rwanda and it is great to see the world does recognize the country’s extraordinary efforts to maintain biodiversity and protect the environment with such determination.

Tanzania news update – 4.8 quake rumbles Arusha and Manyara regions

4.8 QUAKE HITS NORTHERN TANZANIA

After a period of relative calm has seismic activity of late increased again in parts of the region, with Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania registering earth tremors in recent weeks. Only yesterday did a 4.8 on the open ended Richter Scale hit the Manyara region, felt too as far as Arusha, where as a precautionary measure an EAC ministerial summit was told to evacuate their meeting room in the International Conference Centre.

An active volcano, Ol Donyo Lengai, has in beginning in 2007/8 started to emit steam and ash clouds on a more visible scale again and has been the source of a series of earth tremors felt in much of the region before a minor eruption then ended the quakes until very recently. However, in Eastern Congo, hovering above the city of Goma, another volcano, Mt. Nyiragongo, is getting increasingly more active again with a lake of liquid lava bubbling inside the crater. There the last major eruption had lava flow across sections of Goma, including the airport, before eventually reaching Lake Kivu and coming to a standstill when the crater ‘lake’ had emptied itself and the eruption ceased.

The Great Rift Valley, which extends from the Red Sea across Eastern Africa all the way to Malawi, has a series of dormant volcanoes, including in our region Mt. Kilimanjaro, Mt. Meru and Mt. Kenya, none of which has shows signs of returning to active status though, while the ‘lesser’ volcanoes like Mt. Ol Donyo Lengai and the Congolese Mt. Nyiragongo are showing signs that not all is well deep underground.

The Goma volcano story was reported here a while ago, as were developments in Djibouti and Ethiopia, where a series of tremors and minor eruptions have lent credence to scientific projections that a new ‘tear’ was developing under the Red Sea into the African mainland, which will eventually rip open in a major seismic event, likely to create another similar ocean branch into the continent as is the Red Sea itself.

Meanwhile though have nerves in Arusha and the Manyara region been calmed again following assurances by government agencies that the quake, which incidentally caused little damage as per reports at hand right now, was a one off.

Well, time will tell what Mother Nature still keeps in store for us here in East Africa.