Kenya working towards conditions needed for direct flights to US

Kenya is yet to meet all conditions needed to allow for direct flights to the United States of America.

This has prompted the Government to look at the regulatory side of the aviation industry and align it to international standards called category one.

“The government has approved the re-categorisation and restructuring of the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority as the first step towards attaining category one status,” Transport minister, Amos Kimunya said.

Category one status is the threshold required and recognised by the US to allow for aircraft to fly over its airspace.

Mr Kimunya said he met with authorities from the US on Tuesday and deliberated on outstanding issues to be met by Kenya before being granted the green-light to launch direct flights.

He was speaking during the official launch of the refurbished British Airways lounge at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport on Thursday.

The minister said the flights would reduce travelling time by passengers plying the two countries and the cost of horticultural produce in the US from Kenya.

Currently, the airport is limited by facilities to separate the arrivals and departure sections of the airport. The need for separation became more pronounced after the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US.

The aviation authority has also been riddled with personnel problems due to its incapacity to retain qualified staff.

The authority has faced an exodus of flights operators, inspectors and other technical experts because it cannot meet market pay rates.

The few that are available are absorbed by other private entities who offer them a better pay.

Local travellers to start paying Kenya Airways in US dollars

Kenyans will start paying for domestic flights in US dollars from next week, as Kenya Airways moves to protect its revenues from the volatile shilling.

The airline, which has been charging domestic flights in Kenya shillings, now says passengers will from October 24, be required to pay for tickets in dollars.

This means that passengers travelling on domestic routes, which include Mombasa, Malindi and Kisumu, will be affected, as majority of payments for these routes have relied on the Kenya shilling as opposed to international flights, whose prices are pegged on the US dollar.

Mobile money payment platforms that are currently operated in Kenya shillings could also be disrupted.

The move makes Kenya Airways the latest local firm to have lost patience with the shilling’s fluctuations.

“We always charge in dollars for international flights and this change is meant to protect the company from a fluctuating shilling,” the airline’s communications manager, Mr Chris Karanja, told Nation by phone.

However, its main domestic rival, Fly540, has chosen to stick with the shilling.

Last week, our sister publication the Business Daily reported that motor vehicle dealers, importers of heavy machinery and retailers of computers and other information technology hardware, had also started quoting prices of consumer goods in dollars, underscoring growing jitters over the weakening shilling and exposing the local unit to further erosion.

The Kenya shilling has been one of the worst performing currencies this year, after it fell to trade at Sh107 against the dollar, early this month.

However, it has turned around this week, gaining by over 8 per cent to close yesterday’s trading at Sh100.20/100.40 against the dollar but weaker than Tuesday’s close of 99.20/40.

Kenya Airways profits have been on the rise with last year’s results showing a 73.9 per cent increase in net profits to Sh3.5 billion, up from Sh2 billion earned in 2010.

Direct flights will double US tourist arrivals to Kenya

The Kenya Minister of Tourism, the Hon. Najib Balala, has expressed his hope that a fresh round of bilateral talks on direct flights between Kenya and the United States would eventually result in such flights being launched, following the failed attempt by Delta in past years to connect the US to Nairobi via West Africa. While such flights to West Africa did go ahead to places like Monrovia even, Nairobi was "blacklisted" according to a well-informed US source over "security concerns."

Presently, over 100,000 Americans visit Kenya, regularly defying state department anti-travel advisories, which are also thought to be a political tool and have lost much of its credibility in recent years due to regular "overuse."

According to the minister, Kenya’s arrivals from the US could more than double in years to come as direct or even nonstop flights would make it more attractive for Americans to travel to East Africa without the present stopover in Europe, the Gulf, or the three African airports of Johannesburg, Cairo, and Addis Ababa, from where nonstop services fly daily into key American cities.

Other airlines have dismissed the "concerns" by the Americans over safety and security of air travel in Kenya as "a shallow and blatant attempt to dress up other political issues," claiming that they are flying daily into Nairobi. Leading global airline giants like Emirates, Qatar, British Airways, Swiss, KLM/Air France, Brussels Airlines, Virgin, South African, Ethiopian, and many others land every day at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport and yet more airlines are planning to come to Kenya. The facilities at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport are due to be dramatically enlarged, including a second runway and an additional brand-new passenger terminal, to cater to such an influx, cementing Nairobi’s standing as THE aviation hub in Eastern Africa.