NAIROBI, (Xinhua) -- Saying that global economic recession has done little to abate demand for its destinations, Kenya’s national carrier Kenya Airways has announced plans to increase flight frequencies to the Far East , including China’s Guangzhou, to tap in huge opportunities from the region.

In an interview with Xinhua on Monday, Kenya Airways Chief Operating Officer (COO) Bram Steller said additional frequencies would provide customers with conveniently scheduled connections in China and help improve relations between Africa and the Far East.

“Kenya Airways will keep focus on increasing frequencies and capacities to Guangzhou and we are well planning to soon online Beijing with new aircraft available—the B777,” Steller said.

Steller said the Kenya Airways venture into Chinese skies is strategic as it positions the airliner to take advantage of the growing number of Chinese tourists and traders to Kenya and other African countries.

He said China is the airline’s fifth biggest market in terms of passenger numbers in the whole network with very high network contribution as more than 70 percent of these passengers go beyond Nairobi.

“We also see good growth of cargo business out of China to Africa market and this will be further supported by our Boeing 777 operations. It’s also interesting to see the big growth of leisure market to Kenya because it’s expected that China will be the biggest outbound tourist market by 2010 with more than 100 million tourists.”

Steller said China is currently the world’s focus and it is the strategy of the airline to use its Guangzhou route to spread its wings in the Far East region.

Kenya Airways, one of the most successful airlines in Africa, launched non-stop flights to Guangzhou last year, the company’s third non-stop flight route outside Africa. The airline also flies directly between Nairobi and London, and Nairobi to France.

Guangzhou is a major shopping destination for merchants from Africa, who connect through Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA).

“The flights to Guangzhou are currently our key gateway for Chinese passengers who travel to Africa as China own the best train network and air network domestically. It’s quite convenient and low costing for the passengers to travel to Guangzhou, especially currently when every company is controlling its costs.”

Steller said 85 percent of the Chinese passengers are going beyond Nairobi and fly to 35 African countries. “So they are great in contribution to the successful of Kenya Airways African network."

The COO also said the airline has unveiled a new winter timetable with increased flights to Bangkok and Hong Kong and will use its flights to Guangzhou as major entry points to the Far East.

“The additional of frequencies by Kenya Airways to the Far East is in response to the rise in demand for such flights between the Asian-Pacific region and Africa,” said Steller.

“Before the economic crisis, we used to operate about six flights to Guangzhou and step by step, we will resume the frequencies now and also introduce B777 operation in summer Peak. If time comes right, we will resume direct flights from Guangzhou to Africa based on the good slots and demands,” he said.

Steller said all the data show that Guangzhou is one of the fast growing destinations in KQ (Kenya Airways)’s global network and it is “both feed for the demand for outbound Chinese passengers as well as our African trader friends.”

“We will also establish another two gateways as Hong Kong and Bangkok in Far East, which serve as second options. We are under the consideration of linking Beijing to Africa and India will be a great stop over point.” 

Kenya Airways, which served more than three million passengers last year and has the largest network into Africa, is going through an aggressive expansion program and it has added destinations which include Bamako, Dakar, Maputo and Istanbul.

The airline plans to soon launch service on major African routes to preserve its name as the “Pride of Africa”.

This complements 17 weekly flights to London and Amsterdam and regular schedules to select destinations in Asia, including Dubai, Mumbai, Hong Kong and Bangkok.

According to Steller, there are immense investment opportunities in Africa and the continent’s many attractive tourist facilities will now be directly accessible to Chinese and Asians.

Kenya Airways, which has been investing in improving its own capacity to handle its growing list of international destinations, has set up new facilities at its hub in Nairobi to enable it to handle its passengers, cargo and deliver safe flights.

African countries have been unwilling to allow foreign carriers into their airspace in a protectionist move aimed at protecting ailing national carriers, but aviation experts say these nearly obsolete national carriers are struggling for survival.

Steller said the airline is encouraged by the Chinese government’s cooperation since the signing of the Bilateral Air Service Agreement (BASA), allowing KQ to start the flights.

“We are going to build up the very friendly relationship with Chinese government and we also want to be the first choices for the government delegates traveling to Africa and also will note the slots are very critical in Guangzhou, Beijing and Shanghai,” he said.

“We really need the good slots to make sure the successful handlings.

Further, the Guangzhou flights to Africa are also the training routing for African traders and we need more flexible custom policies in order to improve our services to the Chinese,” he said.

In September 2003, the airline launched flights to Hong Kong and Bangkok, routes that have since registered remarkable performance. 

Steller said the decision to venture into the Far East is largely driven by the tourism potential in that region, which translates into increased business for the airline.

Kenya Airways is the only fully privatized airline on the African continent and the most profitable.

It provides its customers with about 1,500 weekly city pair connections out of Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.

A year ago Kenya Airways still posted a 6.5 billion shillings (about 83.3 million U.S. dollars) profit into their books before suffering a full reversal this year.

The losses were largely blamed on the rocketing fuel bills of 2008 and the cost of fuel hedging entered into by the commercial department, which subsequently proved highly disadvantageous for KQ, as the global fuel prices collapsed.

This, however, has been a problem of global proportions as many global airlines were caught in this scenario at their expense.

But Steller said all is well within Kenya Airways since it is on the way to restore healthy finances once again, as demonstrated by the board which recommended a one shilling dividend for shareholders in expectation of once again more prosperous days.
He said the KQ plans to cooperate with China Southern Airlines to launch interline transportation services and add a daily flight to provide the Africa and China route network for Sky Team alliance.

He said the airline has already had code-share agreement with China Southern Airlines who is a member of the Sky Team in China which operates vast network in both China and internationally.

With interline transportation service between these two airlines, all the passengers taken by Kenya Airways’ flights to Guangzhou can connect to any place within China through China Southern Airlines’ flight network.

Meanwhile, China Southern Airlines’ passengers going to Africa can also reach any place in Africa by using Kenya Airways’ flight network.

“As we are currently the only (African) airline in Guangzhou, we have reached SPA (Special Prorate Agreement) agreements with all key eight (Chinese) national carriers to connect all China via Guangzhou to Africa,” said Steller.

By XINUA

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