Business
Kenya Airways CEO Titus Naikuni to step down – has succeeded in returning carrier to profitability
The airline, which is 29.8 percent state-owned, will in turn add its code on the Dutch unit’s services between Amsterdam and Kilimanjaro and Dar-es-salaam in Tanzania. Air France-KLM owns 26.73 percent of Kenya Airways and has had a joint route agreement since 1997 that currently covers Nairobi- Amsterdam and Nairobi-Paris flights.
JamboJet Entry
Combined revenue on the two existing code-share routes is about US$200 million per week, and this will exceedUS $500 million with the addition of around 44 weekly flights, Naikuni said.
Kenya Airways reduced its own European capacity by 5 percent in the first half after scrapping all daylight operations to London, while adding 7 percent more seats to the Middle East and East Asia, where it added daily flights to Guangzhou in southern China via Bangkok and upgraded its Mumbai route from Boeing 767 jets to the larger 777.
The carrier will introduce new low-cost unit JamboJet in the first quarter of 2014, with initial flights limited to the Kenyan cities of Mombasa, Kisumu and Eldoret, Naikuni said.
“What we are eyeing are the people who are not flying now because they cannot afford it,” the CEO said. “We have to get into that market before someone else does.”
Revenue prospects will be enhanced by the contribution of JamboJet and code-share agreements with Asian airlines, Linet Muriungi, an analyst at Nairobi-based Kestrel Capital (East Africa) Ltd., said in a note to clients.
“The airline’s focus on profit-making operations and routes, as well as further cost-management ventures aimed at making the company’s human resource lean and efficient, will contribute to bottom-line protection,” Muriungi said.
