JAMBOJET CAPTURES 30 PERCENT OF DOMESTIC MARKET IN FIRST YEAR OF OPERATIONS
(Posted 10th April 2015)
When Jambojet launched their flights on April 01st last year, did the airline announce ambitious targets for their first year of operations. Fully owned by Kenya Airways is Jambojet a successor of the former Flamingo Airways, which was KQ’s first attempt to launch a domestic low cost airline. When the concept failed, many say it was too early to have the Kenyan market shift to online bookings at the time, was the operation absorbed by Kenya Airways and Flamingo made dormant in 2004.
No doubt was the re-launch of an LCC timely, more so as the web use by Kenyans had over the past 11 years grown in leaps and bounds and the availability of multiple safe payment platforms now allows for bookings to be process from a smart phone and the ticket paid for my mobile money.
In fact did Willem Hondius, CEO of Jambojet, confirm that some 53 percent of all the bookings made by passengers for Jambojet flights are done on the net, a trend expected to increase over coming years.
The passenger target announced prior to the airline’s launch just over a year ago was then set at 600.000 passengers but after the first 12 months of operations did Jambojet clock just under half a million passengers on the routes from Nairobi to Mombasa, Eldoret and Kisumu. No financial results however are available so soon after the end of the first year of operations though analysts expect the airline to post a bottom line loss, in part caused by the transfer of former Flamingo Airways liabilities from Kenya Airways to Jambojet when the airline was launched.
Two weeks ago did Jambojet also launch three more new domestic destinations and now serves Lamu and Malindi as well as Ukunda with a leased Bombardier Turboprop Q 400NextGen after departing from the single model aircraft strategy which ordinarily keeps the cost low. However, business opportunities for the three new destinations at the Kenya coast are thought to have prompted this decision to use an aircraft which could land at those shorter runway airports and aerodromes.
While the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority has designated Jambojet for regional routes to, among other destinations, Entebbe, Dar es Salaam, Kigali and Juba has the airline yet to launch flights beyond Kenya’s borders, something expected to take some more time in the absence of enough aircraft on the fleet and the reluctance of regional countries to grant landing rights unless Kenya’s Civil Aviation Authority finally reciprocates. Watch this space for breaking and regular aviation news from across Eastern Africa.
