Kenya: British Airways Beats Kenya Airways With Freighter Launch

BRITISH Airways has beaten Kenya Airways to launch the first freighter plane into the local market. BA announced yesterday that it will next month introduce a freighter, a fully dedicated cargo plane from Nairobi to London and to Spain ahead of similar plans by national carrier KQ. BA will use a Boeing 747-8 to the serve the East African market. The freighter will operate once a week and will see the airline's cargo capacity for the Kenyan market increase by 50 tonnes, which represents 30 per cent of the present capacity.

BA currently air lifts close to 250 tonnes of cargo from Nairobi weekly by passenger planes. The new service will be co-shared with Johannesburg and Nairobi. "There is demand from our customers to increase our capacity," said BA area commercial manager for East Africa, Michael Murithi. "We are giving our customers an opportunity to access other markets without going through other hubs."

Exports from Kenya include fresh fish, textiles, tea, flowers and fresh vegetables. The launch of the freighter also targets imports such as oil exploration materials for Uganda and construction materials for Southern Sudan. In August, KQ announced intentions to kick off a dedicated cargo freighter business with a focus on West Africa and Asia routes. The company said at the time that they expected the first craft, a Boeing 747 freighter to touch down at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport mid September but this has not happened.

Dubai based Emirates Airline also operates a cargo handling business from JKIA. JKIA airport is now the largest cargo handling airport in Africa for exports having overtaken Cairo. This is on the back of horticulture exports and surging imports of telecoms equipment ensuring full cargo loads for both airlines on both inbound and outbound flights. Horticulture dominates the outbound cargo which last year totaled over 300,000 tons putting JKIA ahead of Cairo, Johannesburg and Lagos.

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