Broken down, passenger numbers in West Africa and Central Africa increased by 28 percent at 85,079 and 20 percent at 44,887 respectively. North African passengers amounted to 48,628 percent marking a 2 percent growth/FILE
NAIROBI, Kenya, Aug 5 – Kenya Airways has filed positive operating results for the first quarter ended June 2016.
Broken down, passenger numbers in West Africa and Central Africa increased by 28 percent at 85,079 and 20 percent at 44,887 respectively. North African passengers amounted to 48,628 percent marking a 2 percent growth.
“The African market compared positively with prior year with Western Africa reporting the highest increase at 15 percent due to resumption of flights after the Ebola epidemic, coupled with the reintroduction of flights into Bangui. Further the increase in frequency in Djibouti via Addis Ababa represented an increase of 9 percent in the Northern African region,” KQ says in a statement.
There however was a decline of 6 percent and 7 percent for Far East and Europe respectively. Passengers carried in India were 14 percent below prior year despite the capacity reduction of 28 percent due to the deployment of the narrow bodied aircraft.
The total passengers uplifted at 894,240 showed a growth of 0.6 percent compared to the same period last year.
The airline also put into the market place capacity totalling 3,517 million available seat per kilometres which was a 1.5 percent decline compared to the same period last year. This was due to the withdrawal of the B777s from the network.
“Despite the reduced capacity, the airline increased the seats flown during the period by 1.6 percent to 1.58 million due to efficient use of aircrafts.”
Cabin factor improved to 66.3 percent from 65.2 percent during the period.
The results come at a time when the airline is implementing its turnaround strategy dubbed ‘Operation Pride’ which is aimed at closing the profitability gap and refocusing the business model among others.
