Tassili Airlines (TAL) and US aerospace manufacturer Boeing are planning to open negotiations for a project to manufacture Algerian equipment and parts for Boeing aircraft acquired by TAL. P-dg of this national airline, Belkacem Harchaoui.
“We (Boeing) have proposed to come here to Algeria to manufacture some equipment and parts for Boeing planes. They are favorable and a commission (of Boeing) will come next summer in Algeria to open this File, “says Harchaoui. The negotiations, he said, will take place in the context of TAL’s acquisition of three (3) Boeing 737-800 aircraft with 155 seats, the first of which will be delivered in September 2018.
In this context, TAL (subsidiary of Sonatrach) even proposed to Boeing to extend the delivery deadline to June 2018 (instead of September of the same year) in order to meet the needs of the summer season and to review Lower prices for the three aircraft estimated at some $ 158 million: “We consider that these are very important points, they are all under consideration.”
For Harchaoui, these new acquisitions will allow his company to increase its market share in the oil tanker to 100% instead of the current 80%, to strengthen its network especially to France and even to organize regular flights to Africa.
On this last point, Tassili Airlines plans to launch charter flights to Nouakchott (Mauritania) with a round trip from Algiers-Tindouf to Nouakchott as its first African destination.
“The negotiations are quite advanced with a Mauritanian partner for the launch of this charter flight,” said Harchaoui, stressing that this choice of charter flight instead of a regular flight is dictated by the fleet currently available to TAL, which is Destined, almost entirely, to the oil charter.
“We could not afford to organize scheduled flights to the detriment of the oil charter, but this first experiment will allow us to sound the market and to go, with future acquisitions, to scheduled flights,” the same official said.
With a fleet of twelve (12) different types of aircraft, TAL was created in 1998 as part of a joint venture between Sonatrach and Air Algérie, before becoming a wholly-owned subsidiary of this national oil group since 2005.
