Delhi airport job keeps Kenyan’s career flying high

As passengers alighted from the Kenya Airways inaugural flight to New Delhi, Kiran Jain, 46, was one of the officials on hand to welcome them to India, or the Jewel in the Crown, as the country was popularly known in years gone by.

As Indira Gandhi International Airport’s head of marketing and route development, Kiran, a Kenyan by birth, was instrumental in launching Kenya Airways’ direct services to Delhi.

The achievement was not just another feather in her cap — it was a connection with her home country, Kenya.

Kiran, nee Mangat, was born and raised in Kibos, Kisumu, where her parents still live and are in the sugar industry.

The critical part of her job is to create India’s first airport hub which includes attracting airlines to connect through New Delhi airport, the largest in India, to the rest of the world.

The airport, which is run by GMR Group, is positioning itself to be a major hub in the region by attracting more point-to-point services.

The construction of Terminal 3, which was opened in time for the 2010 commonwealth games, is important towards meeting these aspirations.

“This is extremely exciting. I can now fly home directly and be in Kisumu for lunch,” Kiran said in a recent interview at a hotel in New Delhi.

Hippo Point and Nyanza Club are some of the places she likes visiting when she is at home, more so for their food.

“The arrival of KQ was an “extremely exciting event” for Kiran who has been looking to lure more African airlines to the airport. KQ already operated 10 flights a week to Mumbai.

Kiran determines what destinations and airlines best suit the airport’s strategy. Her job includes analysing passenger movement from one point to another, the hubs they are using and how to position their airport to be the preferred hub.

“We do the analysis to justify the flight. I spend a lot of time interacting between governments, airlines and airports,” she says, adding that the airport has remained underserved by African airlines.

Ethiopian Airlines was the only regional carrier with direct flights before KQ.

“It was essential for us to have connectivity to the Nairobi hub. There is strong traffic between Nairobi and Delhi and vice-versa or through Nairobi and beyond to South Africa,” she said. “We see Nairobi as a feeding point for Africa.”

The mother- of -two attended Victoria Primary for her early education and later moved to Aga Khan Primary School, both in Kisumu.

She says an allergy to sugar cane pollen saw her leave for a boarding school in the UK and India.

She moved to the US to pursue an undergraduate degree in International Business and Political Science at the all-girls Marymount College and a post-graduate degree in Business Psychology at Fordham University in New York.

While still in college, she attended a career show where Air France was looking for people She secured a job based in New York but quips that she only wanted the job to get free tickets to fly to Nairobi.

Working for Jet Vacations, a subsidiary of the airline, saw her take care of high-yield accounts before moving to procurement, pricing and doing the route strategy for the product, “this prepared me for the world of airports.”

After seven years with the airline she moved to the first US commercial privatised airport, Stewart International, operated by UK-based National Express Group.

She later moved to Bradley International Airport in Connecticut as Director of Marketing and Route Development.

Two- and-a- half years ago she joined New Delhi’s international airport. She watched the video on the airport, liked what she saw, applied and got the job. She moved to Delhi with her family and their dog, rafiki.

She is proud of the milestones the airport has made so far connecting to 104 destinations worldwide.

T3 has a capacity of 34 million passengers; and Delhi International Airport, as a whole, has a capacity of 62 million passengers. Airport statistics show it handled about 28 million passengers in the financial year 2009-2012.

Delhi had to build a new terminal to suit its vision to be a major hub and ease congestion, a move that she says is “crucial” for Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA), which she describes as congested.

As a seven-year-old girl she thought JKIA was the best. Many airports and years later, she says much needs to be done to improve its infrastructure.

“It’s critical that infrastructure development coincides with the demand.”

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