Fastjet (Dar es Salaam) has sold off a pair of a ATR72-500s to Irish firm Elix Assets 7 Ltd (Ireland), a subsidiary of Elix Aviation Capital, for USD21.3 million. The LCC said the turboprops, cn 949 and 826, were previously in service with its defunct Fly540 Angola (Luanda 4 De Fevereiro) and Fly540 Ghana (Accra) subsidiaries and though they had not been in active service since the beginning of the year, they had continued to rack up finance leasing and other costs.
"The aircraft were purchased using a financing facility provided through the African Export-Import Bank; the USD21.35million proceeds from the sale will go towards paying off the money fastjet owes to the bank," it said.
Fastjet itself operates three A319-100s with a fourth, 5H-FJR (cn 2281), set to be delivered shortly. It serves destinations within Tanzania as well as Johannesburg O.R. Tambo, Harare International, Entebbe, and Lusaka internationally. It was recently granted 5th Freedom rights to operate flights from Entebbe to Juba, Nairobi Jomo Kenyatta, Johannesburg, and Kigali.
