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East Africa: Kenya Airways Suspends Code Share With Rwandair
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East African Business Week (Kampala)
28 April 2008
Posted to the web 28 April 2008
Abwao Oluoch
Nairobi
Kenya Airways formally suspended its code sharing deal with Rwandair after the Rwandan carrier reportedly opted for an aircraft that has not passed a safety certification test, the airlines top executive said last week.
The Kenya Airways, Rwandair code share deal was suspended early last week to allow the two partners time to resolve what they termed as "operational safety issues."
KQ managing director Mr. Titus Naikuni (pictured right) said Rwandair had taken one of its planes for routine maintenance, necessitating the company to use a third party airline.
However, the third party plane is not compliant to the International Air Transport Association Operational Safety Audit (IOSA) of which KQ is a certified carrier.
The code sharing deal allowed both partners to book passengers within their networks and board them on either aircraft owned by either of them.
KQ has had a Code share contract with Rwanda Air since April 2003. The contract provides that before the latter enters into a code share contract with a third party airline, the third party airline has either to be IOSA certified or to have passed a safety audit by Kenya Airways.
"The third party airline in this instance is neither IOSA certified nor had it been audited by KQ, hence the suspension of the Code share," said Naikuni.
Naikuni said the suspension would be lifted once the Rwandair plane begins operations again.
The IOSA safety certification process is also required of KQ by other airlines with whom they operate code shares as well as by the company's Skyteam partners.
The Kenyan airline has recently been admitted as a partial member of the elite team of airlines, known as Skyteam, which comprises nine of the world's best airlines, which dominate both European and American skies and partly spread their wings across the Asian and the Middle East skies.
"If we flout this regulation like in the case of Rwanda Air, then we run the risk of losing our code shares. In view of this, and following discussions with top Rwanda Air management, a decision was made by KQ to temporarily suspend this code share to allow for time to address these concerns," he said.
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KQ passengers on Rwandair have since been re-routed onto KQ flights. Naikuni explained that the indemnity forms were to "bring to the attention of our passengers and to give them the option of making the decision whether they would want to fly with the third party airline with or without any liability on the part of KQ.
He said the indemnification was not in any way "meant to imply that the third party carrier is unsafe.
KQ, which operates daily flights to Kigali also, and to over 30 African destinations currently, operates Code shares with Air Mauritius, Precision Air, Korean Air, Mozambique Airlines, KLM and Air France.
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| Copyright © 2008 East African Business Week. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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