EMIRATES DENIED MORE FLIGHTS AS OTHER AIRLINES TOO CANNOT LAUNCH NEW SERVICES OR INCREASE FREQUENCIES ‘UNTIL KENYA AIRWAYS PROBLEMS SOLVED‘
(Posted 31st July 2019)
Sentiments expressed to ATCNews – the publisher is in Kenya at present on another fact finding mission – ranged from disappointment to outright anger, when news broke to the country’s tourism and hospitality fraternity that government was to hold back on allowing Emirates and other Gulf carriers, but very likely other airlines too flying on routes where Kenya Airways tries to compete, more frequencies.
‘If we want to grow tourism, if we want to reclaim our continental standing for MICE business and if we want to fill the additional beds of new hotels now coming on line, we need to have more air seats. Kenya Airways is simply unable to compete, unable to fill the gaps, unable to add more seats to accomplish that. They are neither here nor there right now and while new leadership is urgently needed, that also seems a long way off. Therefore we have to rely on foreign airlines to bring more traffic into the country. We all remember the struggle to have Qatar Airways finally make it into Mombasa. We are wondering how flydubai can serve Kilimanjaro, Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar but not come to Nairobi and Mombasa. You can see, something is very wrong here.
Kenya Airways attitude and that of their backers in government are responsible that Ethiopian Airlines has not been given permission to fly from Addis Ababa to Malindi which would create the first international link for that tourist town and neighbouring Watamu. Imagine all the Italians from Milan and Rome then being able to fly to Malindi via Addis with just one stop and hey presto, they are on site and spared 100 KM bothersome road transport from Mombasa! So my conclusion is, that KQ and their buddies in government actually rather see Malindi and Watamu suffer from suboptimal occupancies than opening up our skies, something they have by the way committed to under the AU’s SAATM initiative’. Something has to change and has to change fast and fundamentally‘ let a regular commentator from the Kenya coast fly.
Other readers and regular contributors of ATCNews expressed similar sentiments when it became known more widely that Kenya had frozen new and amended BASA deals with countries seen as a threat to Kenya Airways.
Kenya’s parliament last week agreed to turn the airline back to state ownership, a process which may be taking as long as two years, a period of time now effectively banning leading world airlines from increasing capacity to Nairobi or flying, as mentioned, to Mombasa or Malindi.
An official delegation from the UAE, while able to sign other agreements, was told that the planned signing of an amended aviation deal was therefore off the table, leaving the visitors bewildered and according to a regular source flustered, given this last moment change of heart and mind by their Kenyan counterparts.
