Corporate News
A KQ plane at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) in Nairobi: PHOTO | FILE
By MUGAMBI MUTEGI and DOREEN WAINAINAH
In Summary
Kenya Airways’
pilots called off their strike late Thursday night following a day-long
crisis meeting with the Transport cabinet secretary James Macharia and
KQ chairman Dennis Awori after which it was announced the airline’s
human resource director had exited the company.
The pilots, under their umbrella body the Kenya Airline
Pilots Association (Kalpa), called off their industrial action at 8 pm
Thursday, bringing to an end a day of heavy revenue losses for KQ
occasioned by cancellations of over 20 flights.
Kalpa agreed to call off the strike after it was
announced that Alban Mwendar, the airline’s group HR director since
August 2011, would leave the company.
“Kalpa would like to notify all stakeholders of
Kenya Airways and Kenyans at large, that it has called off the pilots’
strike,” Captain Paul Gichinga, the association’s secretary general,
said in a statement.
“We wish to assure the public that from tomorrow
(Friday) until the end of the deliberations with Kenya Airways
management on June 1, Kalpa will crew all flights and extend goodwill to
ensure that services operate optimally.”
Following this announcement, KQ said its flight
schedule would return to normalcy beginning 6am Friday but advised its
passengers to confirm their flights prior to departing for the airport.
“We are currently in the schedule re-planning phase
after our pilots withdrew their industrial action that paralyzed
operations at our hub in Nairobi,” the airline said in a statement.
“We will continue to give you regular updates via
our social media pages. We wish to thank our guests for their patience
and understanding and assure that we are committed to serving you and
restoring your confidence in our airline.”
KQ’s operations at its Jomo Kenyatta International
Airport hub were Thursday thrown into disarray after the unionized
pilots went on strike despite a deal with management to suspend
industrial action.
The Employment and Labour Relations Court had also
issued restraining orders to the pilots from calling a strike, orders
which the Kalpa, which represents nearly 500 pilots, ignored.
During the day, KQ was forced to cancel flights to
over 20 destinations, including Dar es Salaam, Kilimanjaro, Lusaka,
Zanzibar, Johannesburg, Yaoundé, Jeddah, Entebbe, Addis Ababa and
Kinshasa.
Flights to cities such as Lagos, Douala, Kinshasa,
Kigali, Amsterdam and Abidjan also suffered lengthy delays, which cost
the airline millions of shillings in revenue.
At 7 pm, the airline issued a statement indicating
that around 10 night flights had also been cancelled, except for a
flight departing Nairobi destined for Mombasa and another flying in the
opposite direction.
While some aircraft sat on the tarmac, the pilots’
union representatives were holed up in a crisis meeting with CS Macharia
and Ambassador Awori well into the night
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