Over the years, South African Airways has flown a fascinating variety of older aircraft. Here at Simple Flying, we have examined the histories of SAA’s planes from the Airbus A300 and Boeing 747 families, and this next installment will chart the history of its Boeing 767s. It may have only operated three examples from this family, but they certainly had exciting and varied careers.
ZS-SRA was the only brand-new 767
All three of South African Airways’ Boeing 767s belonged to the 767-200ER variant of the US manufacturer’s popular twin-engine widebody family. Of these aircraft, data from ATDB.aero shows that it only received one of them brand-new. This plane bore the registration ZS-SRA, and the name Protea. This name refers to a South African plant, after which the country’s cricket team is also nicknamed.
ZS-SRA joined South African Airways brand-new on August 24th, 1993. This was just three weeks after it had taken its first test flight from its production site in Everett, Washington. South African Airways deployed the Boeing 767-200ER on flights within Africa, as well as further afield to Europe and the Middle East.
Just over six-and-a-half years later, ZS-SRA left SAA’s fleet in March 2000. At this stage, it joined LAM Mozambique, where it stayed until June 2004. This spell also included a lease to Portugal’s Air Luxor, which took place between May 2001 and February 2002, in addition to periods at Cabo Verde Airlines and LuzAir.
The aircraft concluded its career with an 11-year spell at Aeroméxico in February 2015. This saw the aircraft return to its lessor, Boeing Capital Corporation (BCC), before eventually being broken up in Victorville, California, the following year. At the time of its scrapping, the plane was just over 23 years old.
ZS-SRB was the first second-hand model
Just over four years after the first arrival of the type at the airline, 1997 saw SAA lease two second-hand 767s from the UT Finance Corporation. These aircraft had spent the first 13 years of their lives at EgyptAir, which they joined in 1984. ZS-SRB was the first to join SAA’s fleet in October 1997, taking the name Siyaya.
This aircraft served South African Airways for around six years before being withdrawn and stored in Johannesburg in October 2003. The following March, BTM Capital Corp acquired the aircraft. However, by May 2004, it had entered service with Russia’s KrasAir. Under the Irish registration of EI-GAA, the aircraft served KrasAir for just over four years before it ceased operations in 2008.
This resulted in the 24-year-old plane being stored at Moscow Domodedovo Airport, where it appears to have remained ever since and now sits derelict.
ZS-SRC is still active today
SAA’s third and final 767 was registered as ZS-SRC and bore the name Ngomeza. This twin-engine widebody had an almost identical career to ZS-SRB for its first 24 years. However, upon KrasAir’s collapse, it wasn’t stored in Russia but instead in the Hungarian capital of Budapest. It was then acquired within a year.
Interestingly enough, this aircraft’s next few years took it back to South Africa. It first went to a company known as Aviation Consultants in September 2009 before joining the private airline InterAir South Africa in March 2010. After seven years there, it left for the United States in November 2017.
Its first US owner was lessor Odyssey Air Finance LLC, from which KMW Leasing acquired the aircraft a month later. By April 2018, it had re-entered service with Eastern Airlines, where, despite being almost 39 years old, it remains active today as N605KW, following a re-registration in June 2019. Data from FlightRadar24.com shows that its last flight took it from Indianapolis to Edmonton yesterday.
Source: simpleflying.com