Kenya Airways is optimistic that a reorganisation of the country's civil aviation authority will be satisfactory for the USA to approve full relations between the two countries.
The airline, which is minority owned by KLM, is prevented from codesharing with the Dutch airline's US partner Northwest Airlines because of Kenya's non-Category 1 status under the US Federal Aviation Administration's International Aviation Safety Assessment programme.
According to Kenya Airways chief executive Brian Presbury, plans are under way to hive off Kenya's DCA civil aviation authority from the government into a separate authority, so that it has greater autonomy. "This process will be completed within six to 12 months," he says.
Kenya Airways already codeshares with KLM to the Dutch carrier's hub in Amsterdam, and has an agreement with Northwest to codeshare on the US carrier's transatlantic services, says Presbury: "When we get Category 1 we will be able to implement it."
Presbury does not see the airline returning to the USA in its own right in the near term. "We need to choose carefully where we fly to and have daily frequencies - two or three flights a week are no good."
Meanwhile, the airline remains convinced that consolidation is needed for East African airlines to prosper in the long term. The carrier withdrew its bid earlier this year to purchase a stake in the flag carrier of neighbouring Tanzania after its proposal to merge the two airlines was rejected by the Tanzanian government. South African Airways (SAA) has since been nominated as Air Tanzania's privatisation partner.
"We wait to see how that turns out - SAA has a poor track record," says Presbury, who points to the failures of other SAA ventures such as now defunct SA Alliance. He sees the long-term solution for the region as a return to the East African Airways-type operation that ceased in 1977. His vision is a regional joint venture, led by Kenya Airways and serving Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and possibly Burundi and Rwanda.
Source: Flight International
