Kenya’s national carrier Kenya Airways will temporarily suspend flights to popular European routes such as France and Netherlands in February.
In a statement on Friday, KQ said that passenger demand to these routes has remained low to due to the resurgence of COVID-19.
KQ constantly flew to France’s Charles de Gaulle Airport and the Netherlands’ Schipol Airport.
“The temporary suspension is due to new COVID-19 regulations in Europe which have resulted in depressed demand,” KQ said in a statement.
Following the suspension of flight to these two European routes, KQ said that it will resume operations in France on March 3, 2021 and March 7, 2021 for Netherlands.
KQ boss Allan Kilavuka had earlier said that travel to Europe has been impacted by a the resurgence of the second wave of coronavirus forcing respective governments into lockdown.
The ripple effect is that this has affected passenger demand to major European routes.
“Europe has been quite a struggle particularly Amsterdam and Paris as the market sees a resurgence of COVID-19.
“We have however seen high demand to China and India. We do however have a number of restrictions including the number of seats and flight frequencies which we can deploy to destinations such as India and Bangkok,” Officer Allan Kilavuka told Citizen Digital in a recent interview.
Towards the end of 2020, KQ issued another statement citing that it was contemplating suspending flights to London and France over low passenger demand.
Both London in the UK and France went into lockdown in late 2020 after register very high COVID-19 cases.
UK in particular has been battling a new variant of coronavirus which is spreading like bushfire and is resistant to some types of medication.
Europe accounts for KQ, major passenger demand. With the new travel restrictions, KQ has been forced to capitalizes on cargo to stay afloat.
Most of the passenger planes have been converted into cargo freights.
