The Royal Moroccan Air Force (RMAF) has taken delivery of its second Airbus C295W tactical transport aircraft, which landed at the 3rd Air Base in Kenitra on 3 November 2026 after a flight of about an hour from Airbus Defence and Space’s final assembly line in Seville, Spain. Neither Airbus nor Rabat announced the delivery, which was first reported by Moroccan and Spanish media.
The aircraft carries manufacturer serial number (MSN) 254 and the Moroccan registration CN-AMU. It arrived 35 days after its sister, CN-AMT (MSN 253), which reached Kenitra on 29 September, according to Spanish outlet Autonoción, which cited Moroccan reporting and flight-tracking data.
A Discreet Delivery Programme
The programme has moved quietly from the start. The first evidence appeared in May 2026, when an aircraft was photographed on test flights in Seville already wearing RMAF desert camouflage. CN-AMU made its own first test flight in July under the provisional Spanish registration EC-254. The first aircraft was tracked on ADS-B Exchange flying from Spain to Kenitra in September, then went on static display at the Marrakech Air Show on 7 October and flew between Moroccan bases, including Tetouan and Al Hoceima, El Español reported.
The size of the order is still unconfirmed. El Español says the contract covers two aircraft, which would make CN-AMU the last of the batch, while several Moroccan outlets have reported that Rabat may have expanded it to four. Asked by le360 in October whether more aircraft would follow, Airbus’s representative in Morocco, Mickaël Bertrand, declined to discuss contract details and said he would leave it to the customer to communicate, according to Autonoción. The sequential registrations, CN-AMT and CN-AMU, point to aircraft from the same production batch.
From CN-235 to C295W
Kenitra is Morocco’s main transport base, home to the RMAF’s CASA CN-235s, Leonardo C-27J Spartans and Lockheed C-130H Hercules. The C295 is a direct development of the CN-235, which Spain designed and built in the 1980s and of which Morocco operates six, so crews and maintainers move to a familiar design rather than a new type.
The C295W has a reinforced fuselage about three metres longer than the CN-235’s, more powerful Pratt & Whitney Canada PW127G turboprops and wingtip winglets that Airbus says cut fuel burn by 3% to 6%. It carries about 70 troops or 48 paratroopers, against 51 passengers and 35 paratroopers in the CN-235, and roughly 8 tonnes of cargo, nearly two tonnes more, according to Defensa.com and El Español. It cruises at around 480 kilometres per hour and can operate from short, unprepared strips, which suits Morocco’s southern provinces and remote desert posts. Some C295 components are made in Morocco, an RMAF-watching analyst, Abdelhamid Harifi of the FAR Maroc forum, told le360.
Harifi expects the CN-235s to be replaced gradually rather than all at once. In the meantime, the C295W fills a gap between the light CN-235 and the heavier C-130H, whose own fleet is undergoing a multi-year L3Harris modernisation in Texas that will keep some Hercules out of service until 2029.
Part of a Wider Rebuild
The C295Ws arrive during a broad renewal of Moroccan air power. The RMAF has now received 19 of 24 AH-64E Apache attack helicopters, has ordered 10 Airbus H225M Caracal helicopters for combat search and rescue and special operations, and is awaiting its first F-16 Block 72 fighters. In September the Royal Moroccan Navy took delivery of the offshore patrol vessel Moulay Hassan I, built by Navantia in San Fernando, Cádiz, under a 2021 contract also kept under confidentiality clauses, Morocco World News noted.
Industrial ties with Airbus are deepening too. The company told the Marrakech Air Show it will open a helicopter maintenance hub in Morocco to serve West Africa, and Spanish shipyards and aerospace firms have become regular suppliers to the Royal Armed Forces.
C295s on Both Sides of the Maghreb
The Moroccan deliveries carry a regional twist. Algeria became the first African C295 operator in 2004, buying two VIP transports and four maritime patrol aircraft, and Spain’s defence export report shows a licence dated 30 January 2025 for eight more C295s for Algeria. A licence is not a confirmed sale, and no deliveries to Algeria have been recorded so far. Spanish reports differ on the licence’s value.
Across Africa, Egypt, Ghana, Mali and Burkina Faso already fly the type, and Spain has licensed one C295 for Mozambique. Airbus counts more than 330 C295 orders from operators in about 40 countries. For Morocco, two new airframes do not transform a transport fleet on their own, but they mark the start of the CN-235’s replacement and give the RMAF a modern, efficient lifter for moving troops and supplies across a long national territory, from the Mediterranean coast to the southern provinces. More on the Royal Moroccan Air Force and Morocco is in our archive.
