Sisters are doing it for themselves: Meet Irene Koki Mutungi, the pilot who flew Rick Ross to Zimbabwe

While the attention has been on the Maybach Music Group boss and ROAR Entertainment, the organisers of his maiden concert, flowers are due to Irene Koki Mutungi who flew Rick Ross’s plane. Picture: @ms_koki/Twitter

While the attention has been on the Maybach Music Group boss and ROAR Entertainment, the organisers of his maiden concert, flowers are due to Irene Koki Mutungi who flew Rick Ross’s plane. Picture: @ms_koki/Twitter

Published Nov 22, 2022

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Rick Ross flew into Zimbabwe on Friday for his maiden performance at the Harare International Conference Centre (HICC).

While the attention has been on the Maybach Music Group boss and ROAR Entertainment, the organisers of his maiden concert, flowers are due to Irene Koki Mutungi who flew Rick Ross’s plane.

Captain Mutungi took to her official Twitter account to thank the biggest boss for choosing to fly with her.

She wrote: “Hanging out 43,000ft with the business mogul, rapper, the boss Ricky Rozay @RickRoss. It was a pleasure flying you.”

But who is Mutungi?

She is a professional pilot from Kenya and was the first female on the African continent to become certified as a captain of the Boeing 787 “Dreamliner” aircraft.

As a pacesetter, Mutungi’s career has been full of accolades; in October she was inducted into the Aviators Africa Hall of Fame after working in the aviation industry for over 25 years.

Mutungi said she was inspired to become a pilot by her father who was a commercial pilot with Kenya’s national airline.

She attended Moi Girls School in Nairobi. Soon after completing high school education at the age of 17, Mutungi enrolled in flight school at Nairobi’s Wilson Airport where she obtained her Private Pilot’s License.

She furthered her pilot education in Oklahoma City in the United States where she was awarded the Commercial Pilot’s License by the Federal Aviation Administration.

She returned home in 1995 and was hired by Kenyan Airways as the airline’s first female pilot. Captain Mutungi would remain the airline’s only female pilot for six years.

In 2014, Kenyan Airways announced that Mutungi had achieved another first after she became the first African female in the world to command a Boeing 787.

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