Kenya Airways serves more than 40 cities in Africa and continues to invest in the region/FILE
NAIROBI, Kenya, Oct 15- Kenya Airways (KQ) has suspended flights to Abuja in Nigeria and Gaborone in Botswana from November 15 as part of its latest network restructuring.
However, Gaborone will continue to be served multiple times a day together with partners via Johannesburg. KQ flies three times a day to the South African city.
The new schedule comes at the back of a newly launched intra-Africa campaign targeted at leisure travellers on the continent to enjoy various destinations served by Kenya Airways.
Kenya Airways serves more than 40 cities in Africa and continues to invest in the region.
“As we go into the winter season we have made changes to our flight schedule with the aim of strengthening our network in Africa and more importantly optimizing our services to selected destinations in response to passenger demands,” Kenya Airways CEO Mbuvi Ngunze said.
On what its referring to winter schedule, the airline plans to increase its flight frequency to the recently launched Cape Town route, that goes via Livingston, from the current three to four per week and eventually to six times per week around Christmas to meet demand.
The airline will also increase its frequencies in East Africa with a new midday flight to Kigali and Bujumbura making it 25 flights per week.
In addition, Kenya Airways will add night flights to Comoros and Madagascar in a bid to offer reliable connectivity to these Indian Ocean destinations. This brings the frequencies to 7 and 10 times during peak for Comoros and 14 flights per week for Madagascar.
Entebbe and Dar es Salaam both remain to be served with 5 daily flights each, providing the best travel options in the region.
“We are constantly relooking at our schedule to ensure we offer our guest reliable connectivity through our hub, Nairobi. I am happy to affirm that the improved connectivity over the summer season has seen intra Africa traffic increase by 14 per cent,” Ngunze said.
Africa accounts for 60 percent of the airline’s turnover, for the year ending March 2016, and the airline is looking to increase this in the current financial year.
On the intercontinental network, Mumbai and Dubai will both go to full double daily flights, increasing the frequency to these destinations to 14 per week.
The network in Europe and Asia will remain unchanged, with daily flights to most destinations. All destinations in Europe and Far East are served by the B787 Dreamliner.
The winter schedule comes into effect from October 30, 2016.
