KQ, Jambojet increase flights as domestic demand picks up

What you need to know:

The national carrier has increased its frequencies to the coastal route from two daily when it first resumed operations, to six on some days such as Monday next week.
The airline is also doing between five and four flights on some given days, signalling high demand for domestic flying, which had been impacted negatively by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Flights to Kisumu have also increased from one daily to between three and two.

Kenya Airways #ticker:KQ and Jambojet have scaled up their domestic flights as demand for air travel picks up after a sluggish start in July.

The national carrier has increased its frequencies to the coastal route from two daily when it first resumed operations, to six on some days such as Monday next week.

The airline is also doing between five and four flights on some given days, signalling high demand for domestic flying, which had been impacted negatively by the Covid-19 pandemic. Flights to Kisumu have also increased from one daily to between three and two.

Domestic flights resumed on July 15 after a three-month hiatus caused by the outbreak of the coronavirus that saw both local and international flights suspended to curb the spread of the disease.

“There is improvement week on week and that is encouraging but far from recovery. Our deployment is still less than 50 percent although we are experiencing good load factor,” said KQ chief executive officer Allan Kilavuka.

On the other hand, budget carrier Jambojet, which had resumed local services with two weekly flights to Mombasa and one to Kisumu has so far scaled to five in the coastal city and three to the lakeside town.

The airline has also increased flights to Eldoret from one initially to two at the moment. The North Rift town normally records low demand for passengers.

Jambojet said in July that it was flying with half seats empty since the resumption of flights local flights, keeping the prices of air tickets low. Additional frequencies on the routes is an indication that the demand for air travel has picked.