Kenya Airways Cancels Resumption of Direct Flights to the US at the Last Minute

Kenya Airways (KQ) has canceled the planned resumption of direct flights to and from the United States.

The flights were scheduled to resume on Saturday, October 31st but this has been pushed to November 29th due to what KQ termed as increased flight cancellations by passengers traveling to New York.

“We regret to announce that due to increased cancellations of flight bookings to New York City, we have pushed back the resumption of our service to this destination to 29th November,” the statement reads in part.

“We greatly appreciate the interest and support of our customers who had booked with us and have made alternative arrangements for their travel. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused.”

KQ CEO Allan Kilavuka had this week revealed that the airline had reported a 40 percent cabin factor load in early bookings.

The national carrier had announced it would initially operate two weekly flights on Wednesdays and Sundays on the Nairobi-New York route before increasing the frequency to three times a week in November (Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday).

KQ suspended all operations in March after the government closed the country’s airspace in the wake of the Covid-19 outbreak in Kenya and other parts of the world.

After Kenya reopened its airspace for international flights on August 1st, KQ reduced its routes by half to 27, dropping nonstop flights to and from the US due to low demand.

KQ launched direct flights to the US in October 2018, cutting the journey to 15 hours. The airline completed 594 trips to and from New York, flying at least 105,084 passengers as of October last year.