Consult national carrier while streamlining airport operations

Last week, President William Ruto chaired a special Cabinet meeting where the Cabinet approved the 2025 Budget Policy Statement. The Cabinet also “endorsed a comprehensive plan to enhance passenger experience at Jomo Kenyatta International (JKIA) by streamlining operations and bolstering security”.

Following the aborted Adani proposal to expand and modernise JKIA, the Kenya Airports Authority (KAA) is back to the drawing board.

On an ordinary day, Kenya’s premier airport looks like a relic of the ‘70s. It simply cannot deliver when it comes to crunch time. Ominous signs during peak travel periods are the huge traffic queues caused by attempts to both ingress and egress the facility.

No doubt, the Cabinet’s proposals are low-hanging fruit to ameliorate an egregiously bad situation. Doubling immigration booths and staff, obviating the need for Electronic Travel Authorisation for all African citizens, introduction of E-gates and increasing the duty-free threshold for Kenyan citizens are great stop-gap measures. They will aid in the smooth running of the airport as more drastic and sustainable solutions are sought.

Even then, all aviation stakeholders should be brought on board. JKIA is a major travel hub on the continent with its hub carrier or anchor tenant Kenya Airways (KQ) at the core.

KQ is the country’s national carrier. From JKIA, it operates the hub-and-spoke model. Passenger and cargo traffic from the continent is funneled in from the spokes using smaller planes and distributed to destinations outside Africa using the airline’s fleet of wide bodies.

Hub carriers have certain rights and privileges because of their strategic value to the nation. Data from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics puts visitors into the country at 11 million annually. Of these, eight million come by air. KQ carries 70 per cent of these and is considered the primary carrier of Kenya’s tourist arrivals. In keeping with global best practices, the national carrier should be at the centre of plans to improve JKIA’s operations.

In the UK, two hub carriers, British Airways and Virgin Atlantic, recently published an open letter in The Times calling for more investment at Heathrow airport. The CEO of London-Heathrow Airport Thomas Woldbye has responded through a public address saying, “Heathrow will work with the airlines and the regulator to finalise plans to invest in the capacity of Terminal 2 and to make changes to optimise and increase passenger capacity in Terminal 5.” Woldbye further says improving customer experience will include reconfiguration and improvement of the layout of the airfield and increasing the number of aircraft stands “to improve resilience and punctuality.”

This is the sort of responsive relationship that should be obtained between KAA and KQ. The hub carrier ought to be given preferential treatment when it comes to slots at JKIA. This is because transfer of passengers and luggage connecting from the spokes through the hub has to be done in under an hour.

It then follows that KQ should have priority over the airport’s bridges connecting passengers to terminals. Less busy carriers can make do with buses from the apron to terminal. Further, the national carrier ought to be allowed a say in modernisation of the airport’s antiquated baggage handling equipment.

-Mr Khafafa is a public policy analyst