Esprit Téranga
Hello and welcome to another Flight Report!
This is the first FR from my Easter trip to Senegal and will cover the long-haul-lite onboard the nation's flag carrier. Air Senegal was founded in 2016 to replace the bankrupt carrier Senegal Airlines. It commenced operations in 2018 and currently has two A330-900neos in its fleet. However, it appears that only one is in service with the airline terminating all of its routes outside Africa apart from Paris CDG, where its sole A330neo flies daily.
As for price, I paid €270 for a single flying CDG-DSS. It's not a great price, but I did it for the rare opportunity to fly on one of Air Senegal's A330s. Checked bags and seat selection are included in the base fare, as is standard for African Airlines.
Flight routing
- 1Air Senegal | Economy | Paris (CDG) → Dakar (DSS) | Airbus A330-900
I aim to offset all of my CO2 emissions from flights. All emissions are calculated using the ICAO Carbon Emissions Calculator and I will be funding projects approved by The Gold Standard.
Paris Charles De Gaulle Airport (CDG)
You join me in the early hours of the morning somewhere between terminals 2D and 2F. As a non-Parisian, I find CDG's T2 to be rather unique (and slightly confusing) in its layout. The terminal is split into sub-terminals, lettering between 2A and 2G. It's kinda similar to how the US divides its terminals, except CDG requires a lot more walking to get around them.

Photo of the apron with an ITA A320 heading to Rome (FCO).

Photo of terminal 2F (I think) with a couple of Air France Airbuses preparing for departure.

And here's terminal 2F. Most websites I found listed 2F as the terminal for Air Senegal, which turned out to be outdated. I later learnt that Paris Aéroport maintains a real-time flight information page, which I couldn't find at the time. Anyway, after consulting Flighty and searching for my flight on one of the screens (see the big screen under the FIDs on the right), it turns out that we'll be departing from 2C instead.

And here it is! Flighty 1, random websites 0.

Check-in took 30 minutes, which is pretty normal for a wide-body.

And security only took 5 minutes. Here's the duty-free area.

There's a decent amount of shops, except most of them were closed this early.

And here are the gates:

Let's do some plane spotting! It's been ages since I've been to an airport with a view as good as this. It reminds me of waaay back in 2019 when I had a 4-hour transit in T2E. It was my first time flying solo, so it was pretty scary (and memorable).
A Qantas 787-9 heading to Perth (PER). At around 16 hours, it's one of the longest flights from CDG and commenced around a year ago.

An Air Canada 777-300ER heading to Montreal (YUL).

As is typical for my luck, our plane is parked right at the end, which made photographing her impossible.

A Gulf Air A321neo arriving from Bahrain (BAH).

And finally, a Saudia 777-300ER arriving from Jeddah (JED).

The flight
Flight time to Dakar will be around 5 hours and here's our route:

Passing through the premium economy section.

And here's the economy section.

IFE (which we'll look at later) and tray table.

First view out of the window.

Some information about our plane:
Type: Airbus A330-900
Registration: 6V-ANB
First flight: 13 September 2019
Age: ~5 years
Config: C32/W21/Y237
One of 2 A330-900s in Air Senegal's fleet. Naturally, being registered as 6V-ANB, you'd expect there to be a 6V-ANA, which was also the airline's thinking… except, 6V-ANA was never taken up. Instead, the airframe is registered as 9H-SZN and has been leased from and operated by Airhub Airlines for Air Senegal before being stored. Kinda pointless information but I find it interesting.
Legroom is very good.

Pushback 5 minutes late.

Taxiing past the Qantas we saw earlier. The lighting here is just too good not to photograph.

An Emirates A380 heading to Dubai (DXB).

And an Ethiopian A350-900 just arrived from Addis Ababa (ADD)

Takeoff!! Bye bye France!

I love all the different colors in the fields. It's so pretty.

Overflying the airport…

… and later the city of Paris.

Shortly after takeoff, the crew came around with earphones.

Somewhere West of Paris.

Let's have a look at the IFE!

I've mentioned this before but I hate these screens sooooo much, especially on day flights. They are like a mirror when you try to take a photo. It's not too bad when you're using it, but it really shows in the photos (I have my window shade closed too). It took a few tries to get the angle right where you can actually see the stuff on the screen and not the people behind me.
Content-wise, the IFE is… meh at best, which is fine for a 5-hour flight. There's a variety of content, although mainly French. The kids' section is pointless - trust me, there are way more kids' movies than the ones listed in that section.






And a moving map is also available. Shame it's not interactive.

All in all, the IFE is alright - nothing special but enough to entertain you, especially on a shorter flight with some nice scenery outside.
Speaking of scenery, here we are over the coast of Portugal.

Around halfway through the flight, the crew came around with lunch.

And here it is. The options were chicken or beef. I went with the former. It is grilled chicken with tomato sauce (an interesting combination) along with mashed potatoes. Along with it was a curry salad, a chocolate cake, and a bun with butter and cheese. The bun was really hard, which is unfortunate but not surprising (I've been given buns before that could challenge a rock in its window-breaking capability). The meal itself was a bit bland (plus grilled chicken with tomatoes is just a weird combo). All in all, an ok meal.

Over the vast emptiness of Western Sahara.

This is the first time I've flown over the Sahara in daylight, which is awesome. It really puts the vastness of the desert into perspective.

Descending into Dakar. You can see the peninsula the city is on stretching into the distance.

On final approach.

Welcome to Africa! We arrived 30 minutes late.

Parked next to an Air Peace Boeing 737-300 heading to either Abidjan (ABJ), Côte d'Ivoire or Banjul (BJL), The Gambia. Information is kinda hard to get but I think Air Peace flies Lagos-Abidjan-Dakar-Banjul… or it might be Lagos-Abidjan-Banjul-Dakar, who knows?

The terminal is to our left. I thought we were parked on a remote stand so imagine my surprise when we disembarked via a jet bridge.
Dakar Blaise Diagne International Airport (DSS)
This is a fairly new airport opened in 2017, replacing Léopold Sédar Senghor International Airport in central Dakar. This new airport is so far away from Dakar that it's actually located in Thiès (another region East of Dakar) and requires a 60–90-minute drive to downtown, depending on traffic (traffic gets pretty bad here).
Walking to immigration.

Immigration took around 30 minutes. Interestingly, after going through the booth (where they check your passport), there's another officer (presumably a supervisor) double-checking stamps… which is when I realized that the officer forgot to stamp my passport before letting me through. Apparently forgetting to stamp passports is a fairly common occurrence here?! I have no idea how it's possible to forget such an important step so regularly it's necessary to add another check to prevent it…
But anyway, here's the baggage reclaim area.

And here's the arrivals area landside.

I'll end this FR here. I'm staying in Dakar for a few days before heading to Cap Skirring on Senegal's only domestic route. Feel free to check out the tourism bonus below. Thanks for reading and I'll see you there!
This was a nice report to see, I've wanted to go to Senegal and also fly the Air Senegal A330neo for a while. Looks like a decent product, not extraordinary but not bad at all. Was there no second service of any kind?
As for Air Peace, it looks like it's Lagos-Abidjan-Dakar-Banjul-Abidjan-Lagos
Thanks for sharing!
Hi VM,
I'd highly recommend Senegal, it's one of the safest countries in Francophone Africa and serves as a great introduction to the region! And no, there wasn't a 2nd service. It was only a 5 hour flight and they served the meal around 3 hours in so I doubt they had time for a 2nd service even if they wanted to haha.
Ahh... that's what got me! I didn't realize the return leg was different than the outbound. I got quite confused looking at the schedule on FR24.
Thanks for reading!!
Interesting read as I'm not too familiar with what Air Senegal offers as product. Usually Western African Airlines tend to be a disaster in the level of service and equipment they use, but seems that Air Senegal does a pretty good job overall.
Also what a luck with the island being crowded by those tourists 😀, this would have probably happened to me too as I tend to hit these kind of jackpots either haha.
Thanks for another great report.
Hi Thomas,
Yeah, I feel like most smaller African airlines don't have the best reputation. But that's definitely changing with so many airlines in the region modernizing and getting new aircraft.
I feel like I'm really unlucky when I travel so it's not surprising I managed to time it perfectly with a cruise ship haha. Although the added bonus is I got some amazing shots of her on the way to/from the island.
Thanks for reading!