Kenya Airways No Longer Profitable

The former Pride of Africa, Kenya Airways, announced its annual financial performance this week.

KQs Chairman, Michael Joseph said that 2018 was a very challenging year for the loss making airline.

Kenya airways posted a pretax loss of 7.59 billion Kenyan shillings an equivalent of $74.93 million.

In the last annual financial report, 2017, they posted the loss of Ksh 9.44 billion.

The battling to remain relevant and regain profits Airline’s chief executive Sebastian blames the loss to high fuel costs.

Sebastian has also said that KQ has super expensive personnel and their aircraft dealers are expensive.

The CEO and the Chief Executive said they’re looking at other avenues to minimise the loses.

“We started mitigating this risk by implementing a new hedging policy with minimal risk. Kenya Airways offers other services, technical and ground handling to domestic, regional and international customers” Sebastian emphasized.

“We have however seen growth in passenger numbers. Management team have done a great job under the circumstances and thanks to the board for massive support. KQ is not just an airline but a strategic asset for the country. We should be proud of what KQ has done for Kenya & support, we can help improve the country’s GDP and create employment opportunities despite our challenges. We need support from media, investors and government,” KQ’s Chairman Michael Joseph.

The recurring losses have raised questions about the current leadership of the airline. With some saying that the financial loses are tricks to help the airline chiefs to bargain for their full running of the JKIA operations.

Kenya airways seems to have never bought affordable fuel. They complain every time of cost of fuel. Where do they get it?

However, the New Symbolic route is still below the much expectations.

Kenya airways has been forced to reduce was the number of its flights to New York from once per day to only five trips per week.

Reports indicate that the route has only had 15,000 customers in a Year.

“I do not consider it to be a lucrative route. There is nothing lucrative about flying to New York,” KQs CEO, Sebastian Mikosz says.

Seems the new added routes have no much impact to KQs financial boost programs. They are adding more expenses to an already loss making company.

Last year, KQ had added Mauritius, Libreville and Mogadishu to its destinations.

They further included Rome and Geneva to its routes after signing the New York deal.

Despite all this, the carrier expects to add two Boeing 787 Dreamliner planes back to its fleet later this year. The planes had been leased to Oman Air.