Tag Archives: JKIA

KQ KAA Partnership at JKIA

This week, Kenya Airways and the Kenya Airports Authority – (KAA) published a joint notice about discussions towards collaboration in the management of Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA).

This is not new or unique. Last year the Ethiopia government merged it’s airline, the largest airline in Africa, making it the centerpiece of a hub-strategy for Addis that incorporates the airport, passengers, logistics, training, catering and tourism). In Rwanda there is also a similar management arrangement, another soon at Tanzania, while the latest results from Emirates, in its 30th year of profit announced last month, show 14% of their revenue was from cargo and 15% was from D-nata which does ground handling and logistics for other airlines around the world including from extensive investments in Europe, Asia, and North America.

At a previous shareholders meeting (AGM), KQ Chairman Michael Joseph spoke of closer ties with the government, and the need for the airline to get in involved in route approval, and protecting Nairobi as its hub. He said that whenever a foreign leader visited or the President of Kenya went overseas, a “win” from such trips was the granting of more rights to foreign airlines to fly into Kenya, which was to the detriment to KQ, in which the government had a significant investment.

According to its latest results (June 2016 from the Auditor General of Kenya), KAA which constructs, operates and maintains aerodromes around Kenya (including 16 airports)  had Kshs 13.5 billion revenue and a Kshs 2.6 billion profit (in the previous year, this was Kshs 4.4 billion).

The revenue includes Kshs 6.7 B (billion) in passenger service charges, Kshs 1.7B from concessions and Kshs 3 B from landing and parking fees – half of which are probably paid for by Kenya Airways. JKIA handled 100,000 aircraft takeoffs/landings and processed 6.7 million passengers (out of the 9.6 million KAA handled in total) and 235 million tons of cargo.

But KAA also comes with it a lot of politics such as tussles over the composition of its board and top management and project disputes such as the Greenfield terminal at JKIA, and with private developers such as World Duty Free at JKIA and other land disputes at various airports around the country.

The newspaper report (Business Daily) also mentions that the proposed partnership with will also see Kenya Airways exempted from payments of some Value Added Tax (VAT) and the Railway Development Levy, a 1.5% tax on all imports into Kenya that is meant to finance ongoing development of the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR). 

EDIT Sept 3, 2019: Kenya Airways formally withdrew the Privately Initiated Investment Proposal (PIIP) following a quarterly meeting of its board of directors on August 27 2019.

Kenya Airways launches Nairobi New York direct flights for $869

Kenya Airways (KQ) has started selling tickets for non-stop flights between Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta and New York’s John F. Kennedy airport that will start on October 28, ahead of the 2018 US winter season.

Posted by Kenya Airways on 10 Januari 2018

The ultra-long flights from JKIA to JFK (15-hour KQ002 23:25 – 06:25 next day) and return leg (14-hour KQ003 12:25 – 10:55 next day) will be operated using two Boeing 787-8 Dreamliners, and an extended crew of 4 pilots and 13 flight attendants on each leg.

KQ welcomes its first Dreamliner in April 2014

KQ Chairman, Michael Joseph said this was a significant event after long planning and extensive interaction with US authorities (11 different agencies in the US are involved) while CEO Sebastian Mikosz said that they were targeting two main groups of flyers – corporate (48 US companies and international organizations that have their regional hubs in Nairobi) and premium leisure tourists (the USA is a top tourist source for Kenya that had 95,000 visitors between January and October in 2017, which was a 20% increase over the last two years).

Kenya Airways is  investing heavy with daily flights to New York (85,000 seats each way per year) that they estimate will have significant uptake, similar to the airline’s current routes to Europe (~85% loads) due to the attractiveness of non-stop flights between Nairobi and New York and they expect that the USA flights will constitute up to 10% of the airline’s revenue after 2019. The KQ Boeing Dreamliners seat 234 passengers – 30 in business class (tickets start at $2,499) and 204 in economy class (tickets start at $869).

In future, the airline will take back two other B-787 from Oman Air when the leases expire in 2019 and they also plan to sign a joint venture code-share with Delta Airlines in 2019 to expand the sale of tickets in the USA beyond New York.

Kenya Direct Flights to USA? KQ Outlook

Updated January 10, 2018

On Thursday, Kenya government officials, led by the Cabinet Secretary for Transport announced that Kenya has been granted Category 1 Status by Federal Aviation Administration(FAA) of the USA. This followed extensive renovation work at the JKIA airport in Nairobi and other aviation improvements. The elevation by one US aviation authority is a welcome step, but it is part of a process towards getting to direct flights, and there will still be more security checks, permissions, and deals to be done with airlines and airports before this comes to fruition.

The last direct flight attempt in June 2009 was halted by the US Department of Homeland Security. The Kenyan Transport minister had even traveled to the US to be on an inaugural flight only for it to be canceled at the last-minute. Delta had planned four flights a week to Nairobi, with a stop in Dakar, Senegal.

The announcement could be a boost for Kenya Airways (KQ), but the initial focus which they have maintained over the years when asked about the US,  is to pursue a code-share partnership, perhaps with Delta Airlines. Under the ongoing KQ restructuring project Operation Pride at the airline, code-shares which involve selling their tickets on partner airlines gets them revenue without having to deploy aircraft.

But once partner flights start, national prestige will force KQ to step in and do the flights themselves. They have the equipment, Boeing 787’s ‘Dreamliners’ that are perfect for direct US flights. The first Dreamliner for Kenya Airways, April 2014, flew from the Boeing factory on the West coast of the US on a non-stop a 16-hour flight to Nairobi, and expectations are to have much shorter flights from the eastern coast of the US, likely to be Washington DC or New York. After all, rival Ethiopian Airlines flies to five North American destinations, and there are ample numbers of Kenyans and US tourists and cargo in both directions to justify KQ flights. Perhaps once KQ gets back the Boeing 777-300’s leased out to Turkish Air.

The last direct flights to the US were on defunct Pan Am, which TV anchor Jeff Koinange who briefly worked as a flight steward on Pan Am and he describes the flights in his autobiography “Through My African Eyes”. That flight appears to have been New York-Dakar-Monrovia-Lagos-Nairobi with a Boeing 747.

Pan Am flights to Africa were rather interesting, as this excerpt from “Life Is an Excellent Adventure: An Irreverent Personal Odyssey”, by  Jerry Funk, shows.

EDIT: In its application documents, Kenya Airways estimated that approximately 60,000 passengers will be transported within the first year of non-stop service.

Sept 8 EDIT: On September 5, 2017, The US of Department of Transportation awarded Kenya Airways PLC with a foreign air carrier permit to engage in: Scheduled and charter foreign air transportation of persons, property, and mail from any point or points behind Kenya, via any point or points in Kenya and any intermediate points, to any points or points in the United States and beyond. and The holder shall also be authorized to engage in other charter trips in foreign air transportation, subject to the terms, conditions, and limitations of the Department’s regulations governing charters. 

EDIT: Jan 10, 2018: A Daily Nation newspaper story reported that Kenya Airways will start daily direct flights to New York in October. Ticket sales will start on January 11. Flights will be on KQ’ Boeing 787 Dreamliner, leaving Nairobi at 10:30 p.m. to land at JFK at 6:30 a.m. and depart New York at 1:30 p.m. to arrive in Nairobi at 10:30 a.m. the following day.