As Kenyans stared down the barrel of a nationwide strike in the transportation sector, President William Ruto departed Kenya on a chartered luxury private jet.
President Ruto hired a Boeing 737-8DV (BBJ2) to take him from Nairobi to Azerbaijan on Sunday May 17 for a two-day State visit.
Estimates show that taxpayers may have paid for the jet at costs of over Sh32 million for the trip to Baku in Azerbaijan. This cost excludes additional costs that may have been incurred by the extra delegations that the president traveled with.
This private jet was manufactured in 2001 and is considered one of the most sought after private chartered jets in the world. It has a capacity for 19 to 50 guests on board.
Incidentally, this is not the first time that President Ruto is splashing millions of money on private jets at the expense of national crisis in Kenya. In May 2024, Ruto hired a Boeing 737-700 business jet that is operated by the Royal Jet of Dubai to take him from Nairobi to the US.
The Royal Jet of Dubai is an airline that is based at Abu Dhabi in the United Arabs Emirates (UAE). To take Ruto to the US and back, Kenyan taxpayers will pay a bill of about Sh200 million.
A breakdown of the charges that the Royal Jet of Dubai offers for the Boeing 737-700 business jet shows that the plane is chartered at $18,000 (equivalent to Sh2.4 million per hour at the time).
The services of this plane are targeted at the elite markets of Europe and the USA. According to a quotation that was provided by the company that owns the jet to a local media house, a one-way flight from Nairobi to Atlanta, Georgia, where Ruto landed costs $748,600 (Sh98 million).
A return leg costs the same amount, bringing the total cost for a chartered Nairobi-Atlanta return flight to around Sh196 million. This quotation is for the 18-hour flight to and from Atlanta.
Ruto: Hiring over Sh. 200 million jet to US was cheaper than using Kenya Airways
This cost was expected to exceed Sh200 million as the President also used the same jet for his trip from Atlanta to Washington.
The jet plane was also expected to bill the Kenyan taxpayer for the flight from Abu Dhabi to Nairobi it took to come fly the president to US, and its return leg from Nairobi to Abu Dhabi.
After hiring this jet, he claimed that he had resulted to the hire as a way of living below his means.
“Fellow Kenyans, I have noted concerns on my mode of transport to USA. As a responsible steward of public resources and in keeping with my determination for us to live within our means and that I should lead from the front in so doing, the cost was less than travelling on Kenya Airways,” he said.
