Direct flight to the US and China have been cut off Kenya Airway’s new routes as the national carrier resumes operations on August 1.
Ironically, these are the routes that KQ has over the last year served in half.
Initially operating in 56 destinations worldwide, KQ has cut its routes to 27 with a projection of low passenger demand for the next 18 months.
KQ CEO Allan Kilavuka in an interview with the Business Daily aid that the 27 routes are half of its entire destinations.
“We plan to resume flights to 27 destinations in August. This represents close to 50 percent of our routes pre-Covid,” Kilavuka stated.
Direct flights to the US were launched in October 2018. The flight from Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) to John F Kennedy (JFK) Airport in New York takes 15 hours.
With the direct flight off KQ route, passengers seeking to travel to the US from Kenya will have to connect flights in Europe or the Gulf in what has been projected to take at least 20 hours.
With the routes cut, fly to Addis Ababa, Kigali and Dar es Salaam twice in a day and thrice to Zanzibar every week.
Besides, it has been running domestic flights which started operating on July 1 after three months of grounding due to coronavirus pandemic.
It is expected that KQ’s 42 aircraft will now fly in the 27 routes including three flights per week to London and Mumbai and five per week to Dubai.
Flights to China will resume up demand while those to Pars will operate with “reduced frequencies”.
KQ has lost an estimated Ksh10 billion as a result of the coronavirus pandemic which led to the cancellation of flights to China in early January.
Kenya-China route has been one of the prolific routes for KQ with a revenue share of Ksh9.4 billion but had to be cancelled after coronavirus pandemic shook the Asian country.
