Washington Akumu
30 December 2003
Nairobi — Kenya Airways has announced a 28 per cent cutback on its domestic flights.
The drastic reduction in seat capacity comes in the wake of the phasing out of its failed budget airline subsidiary, Flamingo, three months ago.
Flamingo - an ambitious experiment modelled along the lines of the no-frills airlines like Easyjet and Ryanair that have become the latest fad in in the troubled skies of global aviation - floundered on the back of a series of bungled strategic decisions and cut-throat pricing, in which its thinly established competitors had an upper hand.
As a result, and with an eye on its escalating costs, the carrier's management made a bold decision to let go of what was fast developing into a festering tumour.
Flamingo ceased to operate as a separate profit and cost centre, and is now just a department within the bigger Kenya Airways.
Even the low-cost airline subsidiary's former managing director, South African Johann Bortslap, was shown the door in a recent corporate blood-bath, that saw the departure of four other executive directors as part of the firm's ongoing layoffs.
Kenya Airways attributed the fewer seats on its local flights to what it called "tactical cutbacks" in operations to destinations like Entebbe, Zanzibar, Mombasa and Kisumu.
"On the down side, domestic operations dropped by 28 per cent, to counter the effects of decreased traffic demand on these routes," the airline said.
At one with the general downturn in Kenya Airways' fortunes on the domestic front, the number of passengers carried fell six per cent.
This was despite an overall growth in numbers of seven per cent for the entire airline, with the number of passengers transported by the carrier at 141,699 for the month of November, the latest figures indicate.
Even then, there were indications of improved efficiency and better use of capacity on the domestic front, with the cabin factor - which measures the ability to fill up the plane with passengers - going up to 71.6 per cent during the month, against a 54.1 per cent for the corresponding period last year.
According to the November figures released last week, there was a general trend of growth in most of the regions that the airline flies to.
A recent expansion in the Far East, which saw the firm introduce new routes to Bangkok and Hong Kong, seems to have started to pay off, driving up passenger numbers by 20 per cent.
The airline has invested in a seven per cent growth in seat capacity on the European routes, though the uptake has not been particularly good, with cabin factor down to 73.2 per cent, compared to a previous figure of 76.2 per cent.
There was some growth on the crucial and competitive Nairobi - London route, with passenger numbers up an impressive 15 per cent following the introduction of an additional flight to give it a weekly frequency of eight.
Competition on this route is expected to hit delirium in the new year, following a decision by British Airways to increase its frequency on the route from one daily flight to 10 per week, starting on March 28, 2004.
BA has been trying to regain its primacy on the route, which suffered quite a dent following a recent ban by the British government on flights to Kenya and the negative publicity that accompanied it.
Another area where Kenya Airway's bullish tendencies seem to be paying off is on its African routes, excluding the domestic circuit. Passengers flying the airline on the continent reached 69,199, a 12 cent year-on-year growth.
Recent actions taken by the firm to get a profitable foothold in the increasingly competitive African skies include the introduction of an additional frequency on the Khartoum to Cairo route and direct flights to the South African port city of Cape Town.
The airline has also introduced bigger planes on its Zambia, Malawi and Zimbabwe routes.
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