As Kenya Airways pilots staged an Industrial action this week to demand the resignation of CEO Alan Kilavuka, questions were raised about the fate of an airline that once aspired to be the largest in Africa but has been on a steady drip for a decade.
Kenya Airways’ current liabilities amount to Sh101.5 billion, putting the national carrier insolvent.
Pilots had previously called for the removal of former CEO Titus Naikuni and his successor Mbuvi Ngunze, hoping that a change of guard would address the airline’s financial problems.
Today, not even Michael Joseph, the man who founded Safaricom, appears to be working.
Kenya Airways has been a historical shambles for the past decade.
The airline reopened in March 2010 with a pre-tax profit of Sh2.6 billion, compared to a loss of Sh5.6 billion in 2009.
In one of Mwai Kibaki’s miracles, KQ was now profitable and in the league of companies with profits exceeding Sh1 billion.
KQ once again proved its critics wrong by earning Sh3.5 billion in March 2011 and another Sh1.6 billion in 2012.
Mr Naikuni, who walked through the corridors of KQ with the assurance of a big cat, now had some bragging rights.
Mr Naikuni’s desk held a vision to transform Kenya Airways.
Within that fantasy, new Boeing 787s were to replace the aging Boeing 767 fleet.
On paper, the Mawingu strategy, as it was known, appeared to be sound.
However, as it turned out, the project would plunge the airline into blunders and gaffes that would return KQ to its factory settings of financial turbulence and struggle.
Naikuni’s 10-year plan called for the airline to expand its network to every African country and double its fleet in five years.
Everything appeared to be working at first.
The introduction of route network expansion and fleet modernization increased the number of flights as well as passengers.
The 10-year Mawingu project was built around the goal of making Nairobi a hub for flights from the East, particularly India and China.
By 2021, the Nairobi hub was to serve 115 destinations across 77 countries and six continents.
Kenya Airways’ Sky Alliance partners, KLM and Air France, would fly passengers to the rest of Africa and Europe from Nairobi.
The next assumption was that African countries would allow KQ to fly over their territory.
They had not anticipated the behavior of other airlines, which would now compete with a confident newcomer.
To the surprise of the aviation industry, Kenya Airways lost Sh7.9 billion in 2013, a record loss for any local company.
