{"id":56950,"date":"2026-01-25T08:42:18","date_gmt":"2026-01-25T08:42:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/brig-gen-godfrey-gasana-appointed-presidential-pilot\/"},"modified":"2026-01-27T08:56:04","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T08:56:04","slug":"brig-gen-godfrey-gasana-appointed-presidential-pilot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/brig-gen-godfrey-gasana-appointed-presidential-pilot\/","title":{"rendered":"Brig Gen Godfrey Gasana appointed presidential pilot"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In addition to this role, Brig Gen Gasana will also serve as an adviser to the Minister of Defence and Chief of Defence Staff on air force matters.<\/p>\n<p>The appointments were announced on the night of January 24. In the same announcement, Col Dan Gatsinzi was appointed Deputy Chief of Staff of the Air Force in charge of operations.<\/p>\n<p>Brig Gen Godfrey Gasana, who has been appointed Presidential Pilot, is an experienced aviator. <\/p>\n<p>This is a rare and specialized appointment, and in recent times it is the first instance in which the role of Presidential Pilot has been publicly announced.<\/p>\n<p>In 2023, Brig Gen Gasana, then holding the rank of Colonel, was promoted to the rank of Brigadier General. At the time, he was serving as Deputy Chief of Staff of the Rwanda Air Force.<\/p>\n<p>Col Dan Gatsinzi, meanwhile, was promoted to the rank of Colonel in September 2024 from Lieutenant Colonel. <\/p>\n<p>In 2025, he emerged as the best-performing graduate among officers who completed their studies at the Senior Command and Staff College in Nyakinama.<\/p>\n<p>In 2021, Col Gatsinzi served as Chief of Operations in the Rwanda Air Force.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-100998\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/54824942788_25dc400492_k-86433.jpg\" alt=\"Brig Gen Godfrey Gasana, who has been appointed Presidential Pilot, is an experienced aviator. \" \/><\/figure>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-100999\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/54593282862_a086162615_k-4d981.jpg\" alt=\"In 2025, Col Dan Gatsinzi emerged the best-performing graduate among officers who completed their studies at the Senior Command and Staff College in Nyakinama.\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>President Paul Kagame, who is also the Commander-in-Chief of the Rwanda Defence Force, has appointed Brig Gen Godfrey Gasana as the Presidential pilot. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":2000101000,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[75],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-56950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-homenews","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":{"id":2000101000,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/54824942788_25dc400492_k-86433.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/54824942788_25dc400492_k-86433.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/54824942788_25dc400492_k-86433.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/54824942788_25dc400492_k-86433.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/54824942788_25dc400492_k-86433.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/54824942788_25dc400492_k-86433.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/62"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000101000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56950"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=56950"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=56950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}