Paris Offers Kenya Airways Smooth Landing to Lucrative European Market
November 20, 2006
It is 6.30am on a Friday and the skies over Paris are beginning to light up.
We are on the Kenya Airways' maiden flight to France's premier airport, named after its wartime President, Charles De Gaulle, and are preparing for touchdown after a more than eight-hour flight from Nairobi.
Passengers - clutching onto bouquets and certificates, tokens for flying the inaugural flight - are delighted to land in this famed city of romance, fashion, gastronomy and arts.
Paris, the French capital, is one of the most visited cities in the world. It receives more than 30 million visitors a year, a pale comparison to Kenya's slightly more than one million visitors.
The new Paris route will enable Kenya Airways tap the southern Europe and the US travel markets. It will also offer customers in Eastern and Central Africa the option of direct flights to France as well as connecting to other destinations. Of interest are southern European countries such as Spain and Portugal.
Kenya Airways Managing Director Mr Titus Naikuni says Paris will act as an alternative hub. It will complement the traditional London and Amsterdam connections.
Since most US tourists connect through France, Paris will offer the airline a base to tap this lucrative market. US arrivals to Kenya have been on a steady increase, growing by 13 per cent in the first nine months of the year.
Paris also offers the airline - which last year became the first in sub-Saharan Africa to win the IOSA certification for safety standards - an opportunity to increase its share of the lucrative European route, which accounts for 94 per cent of revenues from international routes.
Ms Greta Swings, the Kenya Airways manager for France, told The Standard in Paris that the response from the travel industry had been positive and sales were growing steadily since the October 28 inaugural flight. The carrier flies three times a week to Paris. The new flight is also expected to spur bilateral trade between Kenya and France.
According to the French Embassy in Nairobi, last year's total value of trade between the two countries stood at Sh18 billion, out of which France exported Sh9.8 billion worth of goods to Kenya, and imported Sh8.6 billion.
The writer and KTN business reporter Yusuf Ali at Arc de Triomphe, a monument erected to celebrate Napoleon Bonaparte's conquests.
The horticulture and agriculture industries are expected to benefit from the additional cargo capacity, thereby supplementing the traditional Amsterdam route. Tourism is looking up too. The Kenyan Embassy in Paris hopes that it will bring better tidings given the additional capacity on this route.
Earlier, tourists and businessmen travelling to Kenya and the region had to connect through other destinations or use expensive charter flights.
Said the Kenyan Ambassador to France, Ms Raychelle Omamo: "Many tourists have been using Crossair (a budget operator now a fully-fledged airline). Now Kenya Airways is going to give them an alternative".
Also available to tourists is the KLM route to Nairobi via Amsterdam.
"Past complaints by tourists and businessmen have been about their inability to access Nairobi and the region directly, but with the new KQ flights, this will be a thing of the past," said Omamo.
The envoy said while the number of tourists from France had gone below 30,000 per year following terror threats, recent efforts by the Kenya Tourist Board had paid off and the numbers were now edging towards 42,000. These numbers are expected to grow by a further 20 per cent following aggressive campaigns.
Kenya Airways' 10-year-old partnership with KLM Royal Dutch Airlines was evident again, ensuring a smooth landing in Paris for the Kenyan flag carrier. KLM merged with Air France in May 2004 to create Air France-KLM.
The Kenyan airline has continued to post impressive financial results, reporting a pre-tax profit of Sh6.9 billion in the year ending March 31, 2006, on a turnover of Sh52.8 billion, a 25 per cent increase over the previous year.
Mrs Greta Swings, the Kenya Airways manager for France during the interview at Charles de Gaulle Airport.
Up to June 2006 Kenya Airways, which flies to 35 destinations worldwide, had a strong passenger growth of 12 per cent on all routes.
It carried more than 2.5 million passengers during the year and has acquired a Boeing 737-800 aircraft as part of its modernisation programme. It expects two similar aircraft this year to replace three ageing B327-200.
Said Naikuni: "By bringing in this new generation aircraft, we expect to offer our passengers more space in addition to (increasing) capacity on the local and regional routes.
"We will also be able to ferry more cargo within the rapidly expanding trade routes in West and Central Africa".
In the past three years, Kenya Airways has acquired three Boeing 777 and expects one more by February. The carrier has also placed a firm order for six new Boeing 787 Dreamliners, to be delivered between 2010 and 2012.
Already, the airline has unveiled a modern hangar to service the B777 fleet, which were previously handled in Europe. It plans to invite other carriers to use the facility, therefore providing an additional revenue stream.
The airline, voted the Best African Airline for five consecutive years by African Aviation magazine, has a codes-share agreement with Turkish Airlines, which - together with Special Prorate Agreement - offers both companies a better access to each other's network. It flies to Istanbul twice a week.
The airline continues to grow wings everyday. Its latest destinations are two Indian Ocean Islands, Comoros and Mayotte.