Two airlines pooling resources

Details are emerging from Nairobi that two airlines are pooling their sales and marketing efforts as both airlines eye cost savings through this joint activity.

National airline Kenya Airways and partner and major shareholder KLM are two airlines named in this unified venture. KLM a few weeks ago announced that they will change the routing of some of their flights to East Africa, with some flights to Kigali now combined with Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, substituting other triangular flights with nonstop services to for instance Entebbe and Dar es Salaam. In Kenya, KLM operates not only in codeshare with Kenya Airways, but both airlines offer one daily departure to and from Nairobi, giving passengers the choice of a day or night departure, according to information at hand, as joint venture flights.

Traffic volumes for both carriers have been hit of late as a result of harsh anti-travel advisories, reducing traffic from in particular the UK but also from the US of passengers traveling via Amsterdam to Kenya.

The two airlines are clearly set to take the battle for passengers back to the market and by fielding a joint sales and marketing team may stand a better chance to showcase the benefits of onward connections via Amsterdam to European and global destinations of KLM and vice versa via Nairobi to one of the most extensive Africa networks operated by Kenya Airways. Kenya Airways, and the partner airlines from SkyTeam, will progressively move to the new Terminal 1A over the coming weeks and Kenay Airways has already commenced trial check ins at the new terminal with operations gradually being shifted there once any operational hiccups have been resolved.