Budget airline spreads its wings to Kakamega

Low-cost carrier Fly540 will from Friday start daily flights from Nairobi to Kakamega, a move analysts say attests to the region’s flourishing economy.

The carrier is betting on opportunities arising from travel needs of an expanding base of senior corporate managers and academic staff in the Western circuit.

“Local travellers will form about 60 per cent of our clients. The rest we project will come from tourists visiting the Kakamega Forest,” Nixon Ooko, the operations manager at Fly540 said. Passengers will pay an introductory return fare of Sh9,540, inclusive of taxes.

The western region has seen steady growth in the agricultural, educational, and financial services sectors spinning off a working class with disposable income that the airline says will help make the flights sustainable in four months flat.

The number of commercial banks in Kakamega town has risen to eight up from three a few years back.

Leading retail firm Nakumatt recently opened a branch in the town which is also surrounded by sugar millers like Mumias, Nzoia, and the privately held West Kenya with a combined annual turnover of over Sh15 billion.

The firms paid over Sh6 billion to sugarcane farmers last year.

From 2007, Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology became a fully fledged university, opening a new window for the frequent academic-related travels as lecturers move from one institution to another in what has come to define the expansion of local public universities.

The region boasts of high production of maize, the national staple food, especially in Lugari, Vihiga, Kaimosi, and Kitale.

Mr Ooko said the airline is also targeting tourists travelling to the Kakamega Forest National Reserve which is drawing the interest of general and environmental tourists for game viewing, bird watching, camping, and nature walks.

The reserve has over 300 bird species, 350 varieties of trees, 27 species of snakes, and over 400 species of butterflies.

Other attractions include Colobus monkeys and dik-diks.

The latest move by Fly540 is a reflection of niche market exploitation among small airlines.

Mid last year, for instance, Safari Link and Air Kenya started flying down to Diani, South Coast to serve the area’s affluent residents.

“We don’t want to fly to destinations where we have to compete with the big boys. We want to fly to places like Diani where we believe we can make money,” John Buckley, the managing director of SafariLink Aviation, said in an earlier interview.

Analysts say the small carriers are waking up to the opportunities which have been ignored out of a bias for the Mombasa-Nairobi transport corridor.

“The Western and Nyanza regions have a huge economic potential and airlines can run profitable operations serving them,” said Prof Joseph Kieyah, an economic analyst at Kenya Institute of Public Policy Analysis and research, a think tank.

“Railway services to the region have virtually ground to a halt. On the other hand, it is expensive for motorists to ride from Nairobi to the region,” Prof Kieyah said.

He added that in the long-term, Uganda’s new-found oil reserves will have a positive spill-over effect on the region’s economy, strengthening it further.

Kakamega now brings Fly540’s local destinations to 10.

The airline flies to five other destinations in the East African region: Bujumbura, Entebbe, Zanzibar and Kilimanjaro, Manyara and Serengeti.

The air plane flying to Kakamega is a 19 seater but the operator plans to scale up the capacity to 37 in the near future.

“We would have wanted to start with the 37 seater but the condition of the runway is not yet good enough, it needs another layer of tarmac,” Mr Ooko said. The airstrip has been idle for years, leading to dilapidation of its infrastructure.

He added that the Kenya Airports Authority has made significant improvement to the airstrip which has been fenced off and trees surrounding it cut to ensure smooth landing.