Kenya Airways will from January 2019 cut flights to five per week to New York from Nairobi due to IATA winter schedule and not low passenger numbers on the route.
“The frequency from January will be five daily flights then when the demand is high, we shall resume daily flights, said Mikosz, CEO KQ.
Mikosz during an interview with Kenya’s Citizen Television on Wednesday, he said their target is to achieve 65% bookings.
In a statement, Mikosz further said, “As the only airline that offers a non-stop flight between East Africa and the USA, this route remains significant to us because of the role it plays in opening more economic and tourism growth opportunities for Kenya and East Africa.
The decision to adjust our schedule is to cater for seasonality in line with global practices that allows airlines to reduce or add frequencies based on low or high seasons. We will evaluate the option of reverting back to daily flights for this route next summer as we have been doing for our Paris and Amsterdam flights,” said Sebastian.
He also disclosed that the airline is facing growing competition from Rwanda and Tanzania carriers who are expanding too.
For instance, RwandaAir will be using Accra as its West African feed for its 2019 flight to New York (Kigali-Accra-New York) using an Airbus A330 Neo.
KQ’s non-stop flight to New York commenced on October 28 with a daily operation.
