 Air Mauritius
: Air Mauritius is the national airline of Mauritius, based in Port Louis. It operates regional and international services to over 30 destinations with 80 flights per week. Its main base is Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam International Airport, Mauritius.
The airline has the phaeton rubicola or Paille-en-Queue, a fish-eating tropical bird, for its symbol.
History
Air Mauritius was established on 14 June 1967 initially as a handling agent. It modestly started airline operations in August 1972 with a six seater Piper PA-31 Navajo aircraft leased from Air Madagascar on a flight from Mauritius to Réunion.
International operations started in 1977 using a wet leased Boeing 707 from British Airtours.
During the 1970s and 1980s, the airline operated Boeing 707s and Boeing 747s, in their SP configuration (SP meaning Special Performance), on longer routes. Nowadays, all the 747s are gone, have been replaced by the Airbus A340 type as from 1994, with Boeing 767s introduced in 1988, ATR 42s introduced in 1997, an ATR 72 introduced in 2002 for inter-island routes and Airbus A319 for regional flights on the African continent. Air Mauritius was the first airline of the southern hemisphere to fly the A340. As a matter of fact in December 2006, the ever last Airbus A340-300 type was built and delivered to Air Mauritius (tail number 3B-NBJ named 'Le Chamarel'). The airline is also one of the few airlines in the world (Aeroflot, British Airways and Air Sahara being among the others) that have combined airplane service with helicopter flights, using the Bell Aircraft Corporation range helicopters.
Air Mauritius has a large presence in European, African and Indian Ocean country airports, and the company performs a range of services in Mauritius for international airlines.
In 1988 one of the two Boeing 767-200ER (tail number 3B-NAL;named the `City of Port Louis`) set a new distance record for commercial twinjets flying from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Mauritius. Distance flown was 8,727 statute miles (14,042 km). Duration of the flight was 16 hours 27 minutes.
In 1995 the airline was listed on the stock exchange of Mauritius. The airline is owned by Air Mauritius Holding (51%), publicly held (19.97%), Port Louis Fund (6.32%), the State Investment Corporation (4.72%), government of Mauritius (4.53%), Rogers and Company (4.28%), British Airways (3.84%), Air France (2.78%) and Air India (2.56%). It employs 2,761 staff (at March 2007).
Air Mauritius launched its new Airbus A340-300Es to London Heathrow and Hong Kong in December 2006. It will retrofit all other Airbus A340-313X in the fleet during the course of the year 2007. Air Mauritius is adding two Airbus A330-200 to replace the Boeing 767-200ER in late 2007. It has been noted that since February 2007 it has reduced operations using the two Boeing 767-23B(ER). Air Mauritius is using its A340-300s on these routes until delivery of the two A330-200(twinjet) which will be used to operate flights on India, Malaysia,Singapore and Perth routes.
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