Kenya Airways recently reached a remarkable feat by becoming the first airline to rebuild one of its passenger Dreamliner (Boieng 787) into a cargo plane.
At the front of this was a Kenyan engineer who dared to dream and ultimately shattered the proverbial glass ceiling.Hazel Wachira has amassed a vast amount of experience in the two years she has worked at the airliner.
Speaking to Nation, the vibrant engineer revealed that the history-making moment did not come without its challenges.
"The repurposing of this aircraft, being the first such in the world, took a different route from what is normal. It was different because we did not have modification instructions and no one had. What you see here has never been done before," she stated.
Referring to the Dreamliner conversion plans, Wachira stated that they came out of necessity owing to the numerous struggles the airliner was going through in boosting its cargo operations.
Initially, Kenya Airways relied on passenger planes to transport cargo - and generate revenue. This became worse after the Covid-19 pandemic hit, and all the passenger flights were grounded.
"We had been working on different solutions, talking to vendors and even internally we were working on different solutions that we needed to qualify from a business point.
"This (conversion plans) was one of them and by the time the management agreed that we could convert the aircraft, we had gone through weeks and months of iterations," she stated.
According to Wachira, the process took about four months from removing all the seats to mapping of the plane to guide how cargo operations would work and then proceed to the actual execution process.
The plane model recently received an approval by the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority(KCAA) - a defining moment in Wachira's career.
"What this project means for me is that we are able to explore an area that has been a dream. It gives us hope that we are able to sustain ourselves," she said.
