The government of Rwanda has picked a bone with Kenya Airways for the scheduled deployment of the low budget Jambo jet flights for the Nairobi-Bunjumbura route, saying the aircraft is small and has no business class provision.

In a letter to Jambojet’s chief executive, Willem Hondius, Burundi’s Minister of Transport  said they were unhappy with the planned deployment of Bombardier DHC8-Q400 aircraft on the Nairobi-Bujumbura route, saying it was unbefitting of the status of government officials traveling to Nairobi for connecting flights to other parts of the world.

“I would like to kindly inform you, as I informed your partner Kenya Airways before, that our high State officials travel to the world mainly via Nairobi and need to be treated in business class conditions that are acceptable considering their rank,” said Ntunzwenimana.

Jambojet only operates the Bombardier DHC8-Q400 aircraft.

The inaugural Jambo jet’s flights to Bunjumbura was scheduled to take off on Wednesday last week but had to be canceled allegedly after Burundi failed to issue the requisite approval for its operation.

“Based on this the authorisation issued by Burundi authorities on September 13, allowing Jambojet to fly to Bujumbura, we filed our schedule in order to get approval for the actual operation which was to start on Wednesday but to our surprise we didn’t receive the expected approval based on the fact that Jambojet operates Bombardier DHC8-Q400 aircraft, which is the only aircraft type Jambojet is operating. Unfortunately and much to our frustration, we had to cancel today’s operation to Bujumbura and disappoint all passengers who expected to travel on this flight, ” said Mr Hondius.