Review of Transair Senegal flight from Cap Skirring to Dakar in Economy

Jets reign supreme

Disclaimer: I am NOT a Jets fan. ;)

Hello and welcome to another Flight Report!!

This is the 4th FR from my trip to Senegal and will cover the return flight from Cap Skirring in Casamance to the capital of Dakar. This flight will be operated by Transair Senegal, a tiny regional airline with a fleet of 2 Embraer ERJ-145s. Very little information is available on the airline online. Apparently, according to Wikipedia, the airline was founded in 2010 and is based in Senegal (duh…). In fact, the only way I was able to access the airline's website is via the same Wikipedia article - a Google search yields nothing! Despite that, I was able to book tickets on the airline's website - it seems like a lot of smaller African airlines share the same booking system/website design, which is fortunate.

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.

Cap Skirring Airport (CSK)

You join me outside the airport's main entrance. Cap Skirring to Dakar is Senegal's only domestic route (as of the making of this FR) with the nearby Ziguinchor Airport closed for renovations… or something else (as usual for Senegal, information is scarce, at least in English).

Now, I've been to some tiny airports in other parts of Africa - which includes Arusha in Tanzania, which used a rather innovative departures tent, but this is also up there with a waiting shack as its main source of seating. 

A rather unique entrance, I have to admit. 

I like the huge stack of luggage trolleys on the right. There's probably more there than all the people the airport sees in a day. Also, it's probably more effort to push that trolley around (especially around the dirt parking lot) than to just pull your luggage haha. 

And here's the check-in, waiting, and immigration room all in one! You can understand why the shack is necessary now. 

The immigration counters. Unbelievably, the airport actually gets international flights with a once-weekly Transavia flight heading to Paris via Marrakesh. It's up there as one of Transavia's weirdest routes (they also fly a 6-hour flight from Paris to Dubai - torturous!!)

Check-in was done with no computers. The agent had to check my name manually off a list and give me a hand-written boarding pass. It's one of the most unique boarding passes I've received. Felt like flying 30-40 years ago when everything was done by hand (not like I was born then haha). 

Notice how the seat assignment is also empty?? Yeah, there's no seat assignment on this flight - it's a free for all. 

And here's my bag receipt. The bag tag was also hand-written (I'm just glad there's no transit options on Transair or it might've gotten confusing). 

Around 1 hour before departure, we were told to head through security. Here's the 'airside' waiting area. 

There's also a tiny souvenir shop and a tiny bar, which I didn't expect for such a small airport. 

The flight

Boarding started 1 hour late due to the late arrival of our plane - I have no clue why it was delayed; it's the plane's only flight of the day. It was a pretty tense wait at the terminal as I 'only' had a 4-hour connection before my flight to Europe. Honestly, I kinda regretted taking a tiny, unknown airline with a tight connection at the end. At least with a larger airline like Air Senegal you can trust that a plane will show up. 

Here's our plane: 

Some info about our plane:

Type: Embraer ERJ-145
Registration: 6V-AJB
Age: ~28 years
Config: Y50

An ERJ-145 delivered to Continental Express Airlines in 1998 before joining United Express after the 2 airlines' merger. Delivered to Transair in December 2015. 

As I mentioned earlier, there was no assigned seating. I picked a seat on the left with a reasonable wing-view (19A). 

Here's the extremely old and sad seats on this ERJ-145. I doubt she was renovated at all since delivery. 

Legroom is alright for a regional jet. 

First view out of the filthy window… I doubt the window was cleaned since delivery haha. 

And there's the Air Senegal ATR 72 departing to Dakar - I flew on her on my outbound leg.

Interestingly, the safety announcement and cabin check were done on the runway, which was a first for me. Guess that's what happens when you have a 10-second taxi. 

And takeoff! Bye bye Cap Skirring! 

Not much to see when you combine the rather poor visibility with the filthy window. 

Here's the safety card onboard. 

Over the Atlantic. FR24 doesn't track our flight fully (it disappears somewhere around The Gambia - I'm surprised it's tracked us at all, to be honest).

Unsurprisingly, being a 28-year-old tray table, it was literally unusable. This is as far down as I could get it - I've had some pretty broken tray tables in the past, but this is the first one that defeated my ability to make broken stuff work. ;(

But the crew did come around with drinks, which was really nice of them. 

First view of land as we descend into Dakar. 

On final approach. 

Welcome back to Dakar! We arrived 40 minutes late. 

And there's Transair's Second ERJ-145, which appears to be in even worse shape than this one (I hope she's not flying, she looks abandoned!).

And look who turned up 5 minutes later! Jets reign supreme!! 

Heading to the terminal past 2 Air Senegal aircraft with the A321 (far right) arriving from Abidjan (ABJ) via Conakry (CKY) and the A320 right next to her from Casablanca (CMN). 

Dakar Blaise Diagne International Airport (DSS)

The baggage reclaim area. Domestic and international flights use the same area; you just bypass immigration if you're coming from Cap Skirring.

There's also a duty-free store right next to it.  

And here's the arrivals area landside. Thanks to the delay, I have around 3 hours before my flight to Europe. 

I'll end this FR here. I'll pick things up from here in my next FR, which will cover my flight back to Europe. Thanks for reading and see you there!