Nairobi — Kenya Airways has revived plans to expand
its network by proposing to buy as many as 10 Boeing 737 Max aircraft as
part of a five-year strategy.
The move follows three consecutive years of losses caused by a poorly
executed expansion strategy and fuel-hedging contracts that saw it miss
out on rock-bottom oil prices.
The losses forced the company into austerity measures that included
job cuts, a 15% fleet reduction and abandoning a valuable landing slot
at London’s Heathrow airport.
"We’ve put out a proposal for 10 planes at the moment," chief
operations officer Jan de Vegt said on Wednesday. "We will then have to
take two to three years at least to introduce them. You have to train
pilots."
Part-owned by Air France-KLM, Africa’s third-biggest carrier has 40
aircraft, with which it services mainly routes on the continent. That
includes two Boeing 787 Dreamliners and three Boeing 777-300 aircraft
that are sub-leased to Oman Air Transport and Turkish Airlines,
respectively. KQ, as Kenya Airways is known, intends to take them back
between September this year and December 2019.
It cut its full-year losses to 10.2-billion shillings ($101m) in
2017, from a record 26.2-billion ($260m) shillings a year earlier.
Bloomberg
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