KQ pilots’ strike called off, HR director leaves the airline

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.

READ: KQ pilots defy court order, morning flights disrupted

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.

After the meeting, it was confirmed that Mr Mwendar had exited the company while social media was awash with claims that three other KQ directors had left the airline, claims KQ disputed as baseless.

However, KQ’s official position on his exit was that he had already resigned weeks ago and was only still at the airline to oversee the staff rationalization set to begin in May.

“(Mr) Mwendar resigned earlier in the month and was asked by our Board to oversee the staff rationalization program,” KQ said on its official Twitter page.

Kalpa has been especially critical of the staff rationalization which begins next Monday and through which as many as 600 KQ staff will be declared redundant or redeployed.

READ: KQ targets 600 workers for retrenchment starting May

KQ’s management, through the HR department led by Mr Mwendar, had informed Kalpa that the impending exercise would affect about 36 pilots, a pronouncement which irked the pilots.

Some KQ pilots are to be loaned off to competitor airlines such as Ethiopian Airlines for approximately three years following the leasing out of the aircraft they operate for a similar period.

While issuing their strike on Tuesday, Mr Gichinga claimed that the planned staff rationalization should not affect even as single pilot since the airline is understaffed in that department.

“History has an uncanny way of repeating itself; in 2012, a similar exercise was conducted by the same management team,” said Mr Gichinga.

“Needless to say, the staff rationalization exercise did not change the company’s trajectory; problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.”

Mr Mwendar joined KQ in five years ago, his latest job posting in an illustrious career that has seen him work at Unilever Kenya, British American Tobacco, Kenya Commercial Bank and the East African Breweries Limited.

The manager, who holds a Bachelors of Education degree and a Masters in Business Administration degree from the University of Nairobi, was in charge when KQ let go of over 500 staff in 2012 to curb a runaway wage bill.

The Business Daily has established that Kalpa pilots kicked off the strike, and rubbished the Court order, by circulating a memo to its members to meet at their Rubani House headquarters at 10am Thursday with the aim of going on strike two hours later.

Kalpa’s Wednesday agreement with KQ’s management had indicated that the strike had been suspended till June 1 to pave way for negotiations in the intervening period.

READ: Court now blocks Kenya Airways pilots from striking

Kalpa issued a joint statement with the airline’s management announcing the deferral, a deal which was brokered by the Cabinet sub-committee on KQ consisting of Attorney-General Githu Muigai and Mr Macharia.

Based on the court order and the pact, KQ was confident that flights, totalling approximately 60 every day, would take off and land as usual only for some pilots to fail to show up for work, throwing the airline into an operational nightmare.

Customers, caught unawares by the strike, took to KQ’s social media page to enquire about the status of their flights.

“Get to the airport to find that Kenya Airways flights are grounded and we have to wait for an update. Good job KQ,” said a passenger whose Twitter handle is @wiselar.

The airline’s response to the passenger was that the pilots’ strike “was unprecedented after the signing of the agreement last evening”, indicative of the unforeseen nature of the strike.

Kalpa said in its strike notice that chief executive Mbuvi Ngunze is unable to lead KQ back to its profit-making days because he, together with his management, is directly responsible for its current financial problems.

The airline made a record Sh29.7 billion pre-tax loss in the 2014-2015 financial year and the pilots allege that managerial missteps have cost the company billions of shillings in the past five years.