Rwandair

Not Verified | Flew Cape Town to Harare with Rwandair. The flight attendants were cheerful and very helpful. The space inside the plane was excellent and so was entertainment. However, my checking in was a total nightmare. Spent almost 30 minutes trying to check in. As if the attitude wasn't enough, I was travelling with a minor and had a lot of bags, the lady kept asking me to remove my bags from the scale and put them back on the floor. She did not know how to check in a minor hence kept calling her supervisor who was busy chit chatting. She miscalculated my excess lagguage only for me to correct her (she did not even use a calculator). Asked me if I wanted to pay with cash or card and I told her card, only for her to say 'we only take cash'. Why didn't you just say so in the 1st place?. As if that is not enough, she spent a good 2 minutes asking me questions like "Are you sure you can identify the goods in your bags, are these your bags, are there any fragile material?" How can I be checking in bags that are not mine and if there was something fragile that needed proper handling dont you think I would have told you? Late Departure also. Since its a new route I think the overall experience was just satisfactory.

✅ Trip Verified | I flew from Kigali to Lusaka (Return) and I was really happy with both flights. The service was efficient despite the flights being quite busy and the food served was good. Flights left and arrived on time. I would happily recommend Rwandair for travel within Africa and beyond.

Arusha to Kigali via Dar es Salaam. I arrived to Kilimanjaro Airport at 4p.m, after taking a bus because if I waited my belatedly flight I had never been arrived on time to Kigali. When I arrived they said me that my flight to Kigali is cancelled. They didn't know how long. I sat down and after 30min without information I spoke with a lot of people who works in the airport but not with personal of Rwandair because after they said me waiting they disappeared. Now finally, I will take other flight with another airline to Dar Salam where I used to search someone who wants give me another ticket to flight to Kigali. They said me that I need to tell in Dar Salam my story another time to anybody of Rwandair. I don't know what more will happen. I feel that It is a bad airline company and It is the last time that I will take a flight with them. Also staff in Kilimanjaro Airport with this airlines are having inadequate and inpolite treatment. I feel so defrauded.

✅ Trip Verified | Flew Rwandair from Harare, Zimbabwe. to London, UK. via Kigali. My children’s allergies were not taken seriously. They both have anaphylactic reactions to various food. I struggled to get suitable meals for them and my children were given nothing but fruit at times yet hot meals could and should have been prepared for them. I checked in Kigali if they’d have their correct meals given to them and was reassured everything had been sorted. To my surprise nothing had and staff didn’t know if allergens were in the meals they were serving. You are only asked if you want 'beef' or 'chicken' and won’t know till you open your meal if it was spicy or not. I tried to swap my child’s meal as they’d been serving beef curry with pasta and a creamy chicken dish with rice. All I’d been told was 'beef or curry' by a very rude member of staff. I asked if both my kids’ untouched and unopened meals could be swapped with chicken but the vile member of staff argued with me saying the meal which he hadn’t tasted himself, wasn’t spicy! What could have been resolved in seconds took longer than necessary. He challenged me in an aggressive tone, which was completely unnecessary. He reluctantly agreed to swap the meals over. He’d told me there were no other meals for my children so I based my choice on guess work. Had I known in advance that my children’s dietary requirements wouldn’t be met on such a long flight, I’d have spent my money elsewhere. Other than that there were several stops and delays on our way to Zimbabwe. Seats were double booked from Kigali to Lusaka. On our return we struggled to find seats with our children and staff announced that passengers should sit wherever there was a seat. Staff made sure toilets were clean but they could have at least changed gloves as they wore the same gloves they’d been wearing while serving food. The plus side is: one of their meals was delicious, their flights are generally more affordable than most but that comes with a price. Rwandair has more luggage allowance than most in relation to Zimbabwe, staff on our way to Zimbabwe were friendly and approachable aside from speaking in their own language, they also kept passengers well hydrated considering the heat. It would be helpful for staff to carry a laminate list of ingredients as none of them seem to know what’s in the food they serve and it would be helpful to actually say to passengers “Would you like beef curry served with pasta or would you like creamy chicken and rice” rather than “beef or rice”. Some customers who don’t eat spicy food can make a choice rather than having to guess and waste food by returning or swapping it. To and from, staff didn’t know what sort of meals they were serving.

✅ Trip Verified | Entebbe to London via Kigali. I can thoroughly recommend this airline. The service is as good as (or in many cases better than) any major airline, with cabin crew who are courteous, helpful and attentive with good quality food and beverages. The aircraft are new and the cabins are spotless. The seating in business class offers lay flat beds and they offer Premium Economy cabin. I travel a lot in Africa and even if there are quicker options I prefer to take this airline. Punctuality is good and in flight service even on short flights is excellent. The let downs are the appallingly slow security check at Kigali which can take an hour which causes delays to flights at busy times. This is a problem required to be addressed. Also they could do with a wider choice of films on the entertainment system.

✅ Trip Verified | Gatwick to Dar es Salaam via Kigali. We had a very good experience with Rwandair - new plane, ample seats and leg room, all drinks were free including alcohol and staff were friendly and polite. On baggage checkin, a novice member of Gatwick’s baggage handling staff, accidentally pressed the button to send one of our suitcases onto the conveyor belt without any tags or labels on it. Disaster we thought but were reassured that it would very quickly be found. After several enquiries as to its whereabouts, we found ourselves at the gate about to board, still without the missing case. We didn’t want to board the plane knowing it was here at Gatwick, but were approached and reassured by staff that he would make it his personal mission to find the case. He gave us his card and we decided that email would be the best method of contact. We arrived in Dar es Salaam where we had an email from him saying he hadn’t yet found the case - our hearts sank as we felt there was little chance of finding it. We had one night in Dar, then caught the ferry over to Zanzibar, where we spent another night in Stonetown. That morning he emailed us to say that the case had been found, sent on the first available flight to Dar to then be forwarded by air to Zanzibar airport where it would be arriving at 4pm that afternoon. We couldn’t believe it! So, thank you Rwandair, we have sung your praises since coming back home because it was the personal touch that set you aside from other reputable airlines. We would very much enjoy flying with you again and would highly recommend this airline to anyone considering it. No need to worry, they’re brilliant - go ahead and book it.

✅ Trip Verified | Kigali to Johannesburg via Lusaka. First experience with Rwandair and immediately a hit. Spotless clean plane, warm welcome by crew, leather seats with good comfort and perfect catering. Once Kigali Airport will be a real airport - nowadays only a very small and less inviting building - it will benefit Rwandair in its expansion.

✅ Verified Review | Douala to Dubai via Entebbe. Our visitor arrived at Douala three hours prior to her flight. Airline staff informed her that the aircraft had technical problems, and the flight was rescheduled to the following day. They provided accommodation and she arrived at the airport the following day. Without explanation, our traveler was denied boarding and was informed that there was a problem with her ticket and that it would need to be modified or that a completely new ticket would have to be purchased. No other help was provided and the next customer was assisted. After hours of long distance calls to Rwandair and also to the travel agency headquarters in New York (and 30 hours in limbo), no assistance was received from Rwandair and the agency told us that Rwandair had updated their system to reflect that the traveler was a no show at the airport and subsequent flights were all canceled. At best, employees are poorly trained and incompetent.

✅ Verified Review | Kigali to Dubai. I am supposed to fly 9th February by 15:00, when I got to the airport I was told the flight left by 11, this is a mistake from Rwandair, so I was lodged in an hotel to fly the next morning by Rwandair. 10th of February I left Lagos and landed here in Dubai on 11th, upon arrival my bags are missing again, 3bags. I was told to call on 12th in order to claim my bags, I have to go again to the airport to check but only got 2 bags out of 3 bags, this is unacceptable.

✅ Verified Review | This was the worst experience I've had with an airline. We arrived at the airport 2 hours before our scheduled departure time. We tried as much as possible to prepare before and looked online for baggage policies and any online check-in options. When we arrived at the airport there was an employee in the RwandAir line who was checking baggage weight before we got to the check-in counter. On the RwandAir website it clearly states that baggage allowance is 30kg. We were well under that weight for both bags so we figured we were okay. To our surprise we were told that our bags needed to be under 25kg and that one bag was overweight. We were told we would need to get out of line and go remove some items from one of our bags. We complied and went back through the line which was moving extremely slow. Several people were just going straight to the front of the line which seemed to be okay with the staff. By the time the line finally started to move we were getting extremely close to the check-in close time which was one hour before departure. Even after mentioning this, the staff member moved at the same slow pace and seemed to have no clue how to process my ticket. We had no special arrangements or tickets, yet she spent a total of 18 minutes trying to figure things out. By the time she finally finished processing our boarding pass she tells us that it is 7:18 and boarding closes at 7:20! We luckily were able to cut through the security line and make it there in time. When we arrived for a layover at the Kigali airport the Rwandair staff was no better. The staff member at the Joburg airport told me that I would need to get my boarding pass in Kigali (even though I already had a mobile boarding pass). When I arrived in Kigali the staff member seemed to have no clue why I didn't have a printed boarding pass from Joburg (even after showing him my mobile boarding pass) and took about 20 minutes to issue me another. When we finally got onto the plane our flight ended up being delayed one hour due to us waiting on passengers (who never arrived) from another incoming flight which was also delayed. We waited on a HOT plane for over an hour. Our original flight and e-ticket stated that our flight was to depart from JNB with a layover in Kigali and final destination to Accra. To our surprise, when were on the plane the captain announced that we were heading to Lagos, Nigeria. I panicked thinking that we were on the wrong flight and asked the flight attendant if we were headed to Accra. He told me that we were but were going to stop in Lagos to drop some passengers off first, so we just needed to stay on the plane. Not once was this communicated either in an email, at the ticket counter or on the airline screens. You'd think that this would be something that was mentioned. We arrived in Accra almost an hour later than our expected arrival time.