KENYA’S AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL GOES SLOW AGAIN TO PRESS FOR HIGHER PAY
(Posted 16th December 2014)
Going by past experience with air traffic controllers in Nairobi may the go slow yesterday morning, which saw several planes held on the taxiway for extended periods of time, of course burning unnecessary fuel and delaying passengers’ arrival at their destinations, only be a precursor to more illegal strike action ahead and over the festive season. ATC personnel in Nairobi has in the past effectively used such high density travel periods to press for their demands for higher pay, higher allowances and more to be met by government and a regular aviation source, when passing the details yesterday, had this to say: ‘First, causing so much fuel to burn on the taxiway is an environmental transgression of the highest order. They could have just told the planes to sit on their parking positions and not turn on engines to have the same result before then speedily processing them to taxi out and take off. It shows that the brains behind this action are quite empty that they do not take into account the extra CO2 emissions as if there is no issue with global warming and all.
That said, they will probably crank this up in the coming days as more and more people are getting ready to travel from Nairobi by air to Kisumu, Eldoret, Malindi and Mombasa or into the wider region. Government should therefore prepare to have military traffic controllers stand by and step in should it happen on a larger scale. We in Kenya have enough issues already to cope with when it comes to travel and tourism and we do not need that extra headache by the ATC guys to make it worse. If travelers get the feeling that their holiday upcountry or at the coast gets messed up big time, they may just cancel and it will be ATC responsible for the economic fallout and consequences’.
True enough have hoteliers in Mombasa already expressed their own worries that should a go slow or outright wildcat strikes take place and air traffic gets disrupted, that it may spoil their festive season to a point where far less than expected people will come to spend the holidays at the beach resorts for fear of being delayed for perhaps hours at end. The last time air traffic controllers pulled these stunts was about two years ago when extensive air traffic disruptions were experiences for aircraft taking off and landing at Kenyan airports.
Official government sources predictably denied any knowledge of the situation causing more negative comments to fly their way too.
