KQ changes its flight plans after airport repairs

A Kenya Airways plane at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport: The newly operational terminal 1A will be used exclusively by KQ and its partner airlines. PHOTO | FILE  

By DOREEN WAINAINAH

National carrier Kenya Airways has rescheduled its flights starting Sunday following the resumption of round-the-clock operations at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport runway.

International arrivals have also been moved to Terminal 1A and 1E, which were completed last week including all KQ flights from Africa, Europe and Asia. Construction of the new terminals was speeded up after a fire that gutted the arrivals hall in August 2013.

Terminal 1A will be used exclusively by KQ and its partner airlines. The struggling carrier will now operate for more hours and increase frequency on some of its routes.

“In the last two years, we have improved fleet utilisation by 30 per cent by re-looking at our schedule and enhancing it to suit our customer needs,” Kenya Airways CEO Mbuvi Ngunze said in a statement Thursday.

“Through this, the airline has the same number of seats, but with a much lower cost of the fleet.” The carrier has introduced an additional flight to South Africa bringing the daily flights to Johannesburg to four and night flights to Antananarivo in Madagascar rising to two a day.

Bangui will see frequencies jump to three times per week. The recently introduced night flights to Kinshasa and Lagos and reopened flights to Freetown and Monrovia continue into the new schedule.

Flights to Douala are back to normal after the runaway reopened in the capital of Cameroon. KQ will offer additional flights to Addis Ababa, making a total of three flights every day to the Ethiopian capital.

The airline will also introduce six extra weekend trips in its schedule for flights between Amsterdam and Nairobi from August 5 until 21 August 2016 as part of its summer programme.