Kenya: African airline prepares for pullout

Aviation pundits are divided in their opinion over the announcement and reasons given before in the week that an African airline will pull out of the Lamu route effective next Tuesday. Initial mention of this move was by presently made weeks ago and reported here the same day, at the same time as the airline’s management complained about being forced to operate with half loads into the Lamu aerodrome due to insufficient runway length.

While, as seen by this correspondent in November last year during a stopover at Lamu, the runway has been extended by the Kenya Airport Authority, the owners and operators of the aerodrome, it appears that the extension has from presently on to be cleared by Kenya’s aviation regulators, leaving it not ready for use by Jambojet’s larger aircraft.

This has triggered a game of ping pong as to who is to blame for the situation, with a source close to the Kenya Airports Authority blaming the regulators for not clearing the added runway length while the airline, according to the new data received, blames all and sundry for their predicament of having to fly half blank planes to Lamu.

“If you go back to at the same time as you reported that Jambojet will start flying to Lamu and Ukunda, you will see what questions were raised by presently again. Lamu at one time looked a very promising business destination at the same time as the LAPSSET project was looming large. We presently know that the pace was lost and who knows at the same time as and how the project of the port, the pipeline and the railway will evolution. You in Uganda seem to have doubts as well presently where your own oil export pipeline should terminate, if in Lamu or going by other reports, in Tanga? That situation has seriously impacted on traffic by people who were supposed to work on these construction projects. Leisure traffic into Lamu has as well for long suffered over security concerns and international travel warnings have not been lifted. The curfew did a lot of damage to tourism arrivals as we both know. Maybe, just maybe Jambojet was a wee bit over optimistic about traffic numbers. Of course, if you prebook your fares can be much cheaper than at the same time as you fly from Wilson Airport with Safarilink or Air Kenya. But business traffic is short term booking traffic. That means for a lot of the lowest fare may not be available and the higher fare is not much different again. Passengers find it anyway additional convenient to fly from Wilson because of shorter access from the city, shorter check in times and less hassle compared to Jomo Kenyatta. If Jambojet really pull out of Lamu next week, the Wilson based airlines will take up the slack with no problem at all,” wrote a regular aviation source from Nairobi.

Similar arguments have as well been used by Jambojet to explain why they reduced their double daily flights to the Ukunda aerodrome where KAA is instantly constructing a school as part of their plans to expand the runway there. The extension cannot evolution in Ukunda until the school has been relocated, a process thought to continue well into 2017. Again, Ukunda is being served out of Wilson Airport by both Safarilink and Air Kenya both of which operate without weight restrictions using Dash 8 aircraft while Jambojet uses the larger Bombardier Q400NextGen.