One of Air Tanzania’s fancy Boeing 787 Dreamliners has been stuck in Malaysia for almost seven months! This plane hasn’t flown any passengers since last August because of problems with its Rolls-Royce engines. Mechanics are working on it now, but it took so long because there weren’t any spare engines available.
This particular airplane (registration 5H-TCJ) is brand new – they got it in 2019. It’s supposed to be one of two Dreamliners that Air Tanzania has, but for now, only one is flying (registration 5H-TCG). They even have a third one on order!
The wait for the repairs is partly because there are so many other airplanes ahead in line for engine maintenance. This logjam has kept the Tanzanian Dreamliner grounded for much longer than expected. The good news is that the repairs are finally happening, and the plane should be back in Tanzania by June 2024.
While the Dreamliner was out of service, Air Tanzania had to make some changes. They started using different airplanes (like Airbus A220s and Boeing 737s) to fly between Dar es Salaam and Mumbai. They also had to temporarily stop some flights to Guangzhou, China.