Kenya Airways eyes 20% growth in 2022: CEO
After two years of uncertainty, Kenya Airways CEO Allan Kilavuka is confident that more passengers will return to the skies in 2022.
''If I am to take a good guess, I think that we will replicate our increase, so it will be another 20 percent increase to last year. Now this is conditional on there being no further disruptions and restrictions of travel because of omicron, this is important. The other one is we hope that there will be no disruptions because of Kenyan elections because traditionally we have seen a disruption - a downward trend in terms of visitors and you know August which is when elections are going to take place is bang in the middle of what we call our high season."
The airline, in which the government has a 48.9% stake, saw revenue cut in half at the height of the global health crisis two years ago.
Passenger revenue had grown 21% last year, which helped the airline's loss narrow by a fifth during the first half of 2021, but it still lost 11.5 billion shillings - that's $101 million during the six months.
Kenya Airways had slipped into insolvency long before the crisis, and aviation consultant Seabury was hired last month to advise on returning to profitability.
Although African carriers are starting to see a recovery, Kilavuka says the continent's airline industry is lagging behind Europe, Asia and the United States.
