In addition to Kenya Airways’ goal to serve every city on the African continent by 2014, which is running slightly behind schedule, it is also interested in expanding beyond Africa and plans to commence service toBeirut “very soon”, increase its service to India, resume service to Karachi in Pakistan, and is considering entering the Central Asian market. The carrier is keen to enter new markets and plans to use Dubai as a transit city for some of the planned new routes.
Kenya Airways is bullish on its Dubai services and plans to increase it to double daily in the near future. It currently operates a daily service to Dubai using Boeing 767-300 equipment. Abraham Joseph, Kenya Airways regional head for Middle East and Pakistan, told the Khaleej Times that Kenya Airways has lately averaged an 85% load factor to Dubai. Mr Joseph said the Dubai flight in 2011 contributed USD37 million of revenue, or about 4% of the carrier’s total revenue. The carrier expects to increase that to USD50 million in 2012.
Kenya Airways currently competes with Emirates, which offers just over 4000 seats compared to Kenya Airways’ 2000 seat offering. Air Arabiaand Rwandair also operate between Kenya and the UAE: Rwandair operates its Dubai service through Mombasa while Air Arabia operates a four times weekly A320 service between Nairobi and Sharjah. Etihad will commence services between Abu Dhabi and Nairobi on 01-Apr-2012.
Kenya Airways wants to operate one service at night and one during the day, so it can cater for tourism and business. Its current schedule sees a daily 19:20 departure from Nairobi arriving into Dubai 01:35 the following day with a subsequent 02:35 departure from Dubai and 06:40 arrival into Nairobi. Kenya Airways also operates a three weekly service via Muscat.
Kenya Airways currently serves Mumbai daily with 777-200 equipment, however, is seeking to expand further into the region. Within the next five years, Kenya Airways hopes to double frequency to Mumbai and enter Delhi (which regional competitor Ethiopian Airlines also serves) as well as serve Ahmedabad and Chennai in the country’s east.
India’s economic growth has averaged around 7% each year since 1997, making it one of the world’s largest emerging markets. According toAirbus forecasts, traffic flows between sub-Saharan Africa and India are expected to grow at a rate of 7.1% p/a over the 2011 to 2030 period.
There are currently six carriers operating between Africa and India, five of which are African carriers (four of them are in sub-Sahara Africa). While Kenya Airways is the second largest African carrier to operate to India, its Nairobi-Mumbai route is the busiest of all nine routes operating.
Source CAPA, Centre for Aviation
