Hope for KQ, Jambojet as Demand for Domestic Flights Rises

Kevin Namunwa | Sep 25, 2020

Finally, there is hope for Kenyan carriers as demand for domestic flights begins improving after a sluggish start in July.

The national carrier has increased its frequencies to the coastal route from two daily when it first resumed operations, to six on some days such as Monday next week.

The situation has been improving in the Kenyan air routes as the airline also does between five and four flights on some given days.

This signals high demand for domestic flying, which had been impacted negatively by the Covid-19 pandemic. Flights to Kisumu have also increased from one daily to between three and two.

The coronavirus pandemic had caused a three-month hiatus in the flight sector hence the slow restart. Domestic flights only resumed on July 15 after return guidelines were put in place to curb the spread of Covid-19 virus.

“There is improvement week on week and that is encouraging but far from recovery. Our deployment is still less than 50 percent although we are experiencing good load factor,” said KQ chief executive officer Allan Kilavuka.

Budget carrier Jambojet, on the other hand, had resumed local services with two weekly flights to Mombasa and one to Kisumu but has scaled to five in the coastal city and three to the lakeside town.

The airline has also increased flights to Eldoret from one initially to two at the moment. The North Rift town normally records low demand for passengers.

Jambojet said in July that it was flying with half seats empty since the resumption of flights local flights, keeping the prices of air tickets low. Additional frequencies on the routes is an indication that the demand for air travel has picked.

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